On 10/3/17 12:09 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
Scott Mueller mentions it in his "Upgrading And Repairing PCs"
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2028834
He said that "IDE" was a "marketing term", with "ATA" being the
"official" name. Which is pretty much the same as the discussion
here, with both terms being used concurrently, without a clear
comparison of the histories of their origins.
"Which came first? The formal name? or the street name?"
His stuff tends to be fairly accurate. Although he specifically
mentions the Wren II, he makes a statement that the HARDCARD were the
earliest IDE. (Not quite what we were discussing)
He uses IDE as being very general, with ATA being very specific, and
thus opening up tems such as "ATA IDE" and "pre-ATA IDE" But, by using
IDE so loosely as to include HARDCARD, he avoids explicitly declaring
IDE as the SPECIFIC interface, to have existed prior to ATA.
Also, of course, "pre-ATA IDE" can mean IDE prior to the ATA standard
release, rather than prior to the early use of "ATA" as a name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#ATA_standards_versions.2C_transfer_rates.2C_and_features
The whole issue is complicated by the terms only being used in
advertising and spec sheets, since drives of that time never mentioned
their interface type/name on the drive itself.
Thus, finding the relevant drive on a shelf doesn't answer any of the
questions, and it remains a search of User Manuals and advertising.
NOTE: on the ST157, there is a WARNING label to not low level format.
As always, "FIRST" in history is muddled!
"FIRST" to be mentioned
"FIRST" to be OFFICIALLY mentioned
"FIRST" to be advertised
"FIRST" announced
"FIRST" released
"FIRST" to be manufactured
"FIRST" to be shipped
"FIRST" to be standardized
. . . "FIRST" to end up on my bench.
I am continuing to investigate, but I think that IDE came first. I have
found references that describe the Compaq/WD/CDC Wren II HH disk (which
pre-dates the formation of the SCSI-2 CAM committee) as "IDE". Some of
this reportedly comes from the people who did the work (years after the
fact). However, I have yet to find period documents that include the
term "IDE". I don't know if the people who did the work used the term at
the time or were applying it after the fact.
Here are a couple documents that I used as starting points -
http://chmss.wikifoundry.com/page/Compaq%2FConner+CP341+IDE%2FATA+Drive
http://web.archive.org/web/20081004160101/http://www.ata-atapi.com/histcam.html
alan
