Adam – thanks for the research, can I assume that the other ads u found were
also CompuAdd clone ads?
CompuAdd is really interesting because it clearly predates the CAM meeting in
early 1989. Here is a quote from the March 9, 1989, CAM minutes
“Gene Milligan pointed out that there is some standardization activity being
done by Conner and Miniscribe in the area of mechanical and electrical
characteristics of the AT controller interface (with specific application to
embedded AT controller interface disk drives)”
“Embedded AT Controller” in some form (even just “AT”) seems to be the term of
the industry prior to “IDE” and “ATA”
I have some fairly complete files on disk drive companies and from the limited
material I have it appears that neither Conner, nor MiniScribe, nor Quantum,
nor Imprimis used “IDE” in any form in their advertisements and product
literature until well after the CAM meeting. Here are some examples:
YYY-MM Company Quote Source
1987-06 Conner an embedded IBM PC/AT controller
CP342 announcement Press Release
1988-02 Conner designed to operate on an IBM PC AT
CP3022 Product Spec
1989-03 Imprimis A choice of industry-standard interfaces —
SCSI, ESDI, AT, ST506 OEM Product Catalog
1989-04 CAM Com. Definition - ATA (AT Attachment):
ATA-1 rev 2
1989-09 Quantum the new ProDrive products are available with
embedded SCSI or AT-Bus controllers. ProDrive 120-210
announcement PR
1989-10 Miniscribe ST412, XT, AT, SCSI , or SCSI Macintosh
interface 1989 Product Guide
1989-10 PrairieTek DRIVE W ITH EMBEDDED AT OR XT CONTROLLER
PT120 & PT240 data sheer
1989-11 Kalok Full SCSI, PC/AT or PS/2 interface
compatibility Octagon I Family
1990-07 Areal drives with the SCSI or AT interface
EN article
Of course my files are not as complete as Porter’s so if this becomes important
I might have to visit the CHM and check them out.
The question becomes whose drives were CompuAdd using? BTW if you scan two
pages on in the cited PC Magazine u will find CompuAdd offering add-on “HDDs”
for the “IBM-ATs” and “IBM-XTs” from MiniScribe and Seagate - at that time
Seagate did not have an ATA (or IDE) drive so maybe CompuAdd’s drives weren’t
ATA as we now know it.
In any event this discussion started with an assertion that IDE preceded ATA
and so far the evidence suggests IDE was at best contemporaneous.
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Sampson [mailto:a...@offog.org]
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2017 12:57 PM
To: Tom Gardner via cctalk
Subject: Re: The origin of the phrases ATA and IDE [WAS:RE: formatting MFM
drives on a IBM PC]
Tom Gardner via cctalk < <mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org> cctalk@classiccmp.org>
writes:
> But again if anyone has any documents dating IDE in the 1980s I d love
> to see them
Don't forget the Internet Archive's impressive collection of scanned magazines
for questions like this! There are several references in 1989 in Infoworld and
similar periodicals.
The earliest I could find from a quick search is this ad from CompuAdd
Corporation in PC Magazine, December 27th 1988, listing PC clones with
"Integrated Drive Electronics fixed disk drive interface" and "IDE fixed disk
drive interface":
<https://archive.org/stream/PC-Mag-1988-12-27#page/n227/mode/2up>
https://archive.org/stream/PC-Mag-1988-12-27#page/n227/mode/2up
The ad in the 1988-11-15 issue doesn't mention IDE, so it looks like that's one
of the first times CompuAdd thought it was useful for marketing...
Cheers,
--
Adam Sampson < <mailto:a...@offog.org> a...@offog.org>
< <http://offog.org/> http://offog.org/>
