Unfortunately there is no documentation to support Pete's recollection - if there is any I would like to see it.
For example: · WD's Fall 1988 Corporate Product Overview does not use the terms IDE, Intelligent d..., or Integrated d... Similarly, WD's October 23, 1989 press release " WESTERN DIGITAL ANNOUNCES VOLUME SHIPMENT OF ITS NEW AT-COMPATIBLE, 3.5-INCH INTELLIGENT DRIVES," does not use the acronym IDE or any of its meanings. · Conner as late as 1990 was not using the acronym IDE or any of its meanings in its product literature. · The MiniScribe 1988 announcement of its 8000 series did not use the acronym IDE or any of its meanings So if WD, Conner and possibly MiniScribe weren’t using the term in 1989 I have a hard time accepting it's common use that early. But again if anyone has any documents dating IDE in the 1980s I’d love to see them Tom -----Original Message----- From: Pete Turnbull [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, October 02, 2017 8:29 AM To: Tom Gardner via cctalk Subject: Re: The origin of the phrases ATA and IDE [WAS:RE: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC] On 01/10/2017 20:46, Tom Gardner via cctalk wrote: > As best I can tell WD began publically using the term IDE for its > drives sometime around 1990 Nope. I recall conversations with a small-scale developer in the UK who was creating addons and accessories for the company I worked for (Acorn Computers) in 1987-1988, and he was touting IDE as best improvement (because simpler and cheaper to interface) on ST506/ST412 interface drives for the hard drive upgrades he was about to market. I recall having to ask what IDE stood for, at the time. So it must have been in common use, at least amongst developers, by then. By 1989 there were more people using "IDE" - by that name - than anything else in the markets I was involved in. -- Pete Pete Turnbull
