WD acquired the Tandon drive business in 1988 so it was both a drive maker and a chip supplier to other drive makers.
WD used the term "Integrated Drive Electronics" internally as early as June 23, 1985 on proprietary business plans (I have copies) but the target "Intelligent Drive" interfaces are SCSI and "host level" without detail so I don't think this counts as IDE in the sense of ATA. My recollection is they were then thinking more along the lines of direct connection to the host bus - like Hardcard did. Hallam speaking as a WD employee did not use IDE in his October 1986 Buscon presentation where he disclosed direct connection to AT bus extension with 40 pin connector. An early WD (second?) "intelligent" drive was announced in a September 23, 1989 press release as, "WESTERN DIGITAL ANNOUNCES VOLUME SHIPMENT OF ITS NEW AT-COMPATIBLE, 3.5-INCH INTELLIGENT DRIVES" and "WD93024-A and WD93044-A, a pair of AT-compatible, 3.5-inch, intelligent disk drives." It did not use the term IDE. I looked for a product spec on line but did not find any. Photos of these early WD intelligent drives either show no interface definition or use the terms "PC XT" or "PC AT". My recollection is that WD was indeed the leading proponent of "IDE" but I can't find usage by them in 1989. Tom -----Original Message----- From: Fred Cisin [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2017 6:32 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: The origin of the phrases ATA and IDE [WAS:RE: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC] On Wed, 4 Oct 2017, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > Why on earth would WD have anything to do with it? They supplied the > controller, but not the drives. I used to have an early Maxtor ~50MB > 3.5" drive with bugs in the interface. Nowhere did they give any nod to WD. I was thinking in terms of their wholesale marketing TO the drive companies. When they wanted to peddle their chipset to Maxtor, etc. what materials did they send? I assumed that WD was the first to produce a controller chipset. Or was WD even the maker of the controller chips on the drive? You're right, though, that WD may be totally irrelevant. Surely, it would not have been hard for any of the drive makers to start making their own. When did any of the drive makers start saying "IDE" on their drive spec sheets? (I've already make my rant about them not putting any of the information on the drive that was necessary for end users to use the drive)
