On 10/1/17 1:22 PM, Fred Cisin via cctech wrote:
On Sun, 1 Oct 2017, Tom Gardner via cctalk wrote:
I've looked for but cannot find any WD or Compaq documents publically
using IDE to describe what ultimately issued as ATA-1. My search
included various Compaq maintenance manuals.
Thank you very much for doing those searches!
My first encounter with one was in a Compaq, without having previously
heard any mention that they were going to do anything like that. And
no prior mention of "IDE" NOR "ATA".
It was a surprise, but seemed to make sense.
So, the PR and naming bodies of the relevant companies let it go into
use without massive prior bragging! I hadn't been paying close
attention to CDC nor Connor, but I seemed to have missed whatever WD
or Compaq had advertised about it at Comdex.
And then, later, I heard "IDE", before I had heard "ATA", but that was
presumably just due to the circles that I dealt with.
The earliest public use of ATA and AT attachment that I can find is
March 1969 at the CAM committee
Would that be 1989?
My recollection (possibly flawed) is WD tried to have the responsible
committee change the name to IDE and failed.
especially interesting
Standards committees are always being pressured by individual
companies to use the specific structures and terminologies of those
companies.
I do have a confidential WD document from 1965 which does use the
term IDE for "Integrated Drive Electronics" referring to their chips,
a drive built with these chips was called an "Integrated Drive" or an
ID.
Would that be 1985?
The CAM and ANSI committees have since March 1969 defined ATA == AT
Would that be 1989?
(In 1969, it would certainly NOT be a reference to the IBM PC/AT (5170)!)
I did my own searching.
There was a call to form the CAM (Common Access Method) Committee of
X3T9.2 (SCSI-2) on 30 Sept 1988 and they first met on 19 Oct 1988. The
primary goal was to come up with a SCSI subset to facilitate it support
in multiple OSs and BIOS on PCs. At the first meeting, two items
mentioned in the minutes seem relevant. 1. Jim McGrath of Quantum was
interested in embedding SCSI in the drive without a physical SCSI bus
and described problems with reference to the PC/AT. 2. Bob Snively of
Adaptec is described as indicating that everyone at the meeting has the
problem of "attaching to systems" and this aspect of the committee's
work was described as "attachment problems".
Unfortunately, I can't find CAM Committee minutes after that first
meeting. If anyone here is a member of ANSI Technical Committee T13,
perhaps they can check to see if the minutes or early drafts of ATA
documents hidden away in the member only areas of the web site.
The next thing that I found was June 1989 X3T9.2 minutes indicating the
the CAM Committee had almost completed the "ATA document". It mentioned
two CAM Committee meetings (10 May 1989 and 8 June 1989), but was not
clear on at which one of those meetings it was reported on the status of
the ATA document. I read somewhere unofficial that the first draft of
the ATA document came out in Mar 1989.
alan
