On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 11:06:02AM -0800, Bob Miller wrote: > My P4P800 motherboard has two SATA connectors. Does that mean > I could hook up a max of two SATA drives to it?
Yes, just two drives. You've got a hybrid system with the typical limitations of hybrid systems: the new technology is supported, but you will find ourself wanting an upgrade when the new technology becomes the standard one. Seven years ago I bought my first system with PCI slots. There were three common standards of the time for improving ISA: EISA, VLB, and PCI. VLB's time had since passed and, and it was common still to see boards with two ISA, two EISA or VLB, and two PCI. The PCI on these boards was so-so, and there were only two. PCI-only boards were unheard of (and technically speaking still are for ia32 machines which still provide an ISA bridge for AT keyboards, PS/2 mice, and floppy drives..) But still, ISA implemented as a bridge to PCI allowed PCI to be the dominant system architecture and its performance has been good enough until now. At that time, I had the foresight to buy a board with only two ISA slots and four PCI. They were rare in those days. Very rare. Two years later it was still common to see three ISA slots, though it was no longer uncommon to have only two. It didn't matter, though, because the PCI was not constrained by ISA. SATA on your board is constrained both by IDE and by PCI. There;s no help for it I'm afraid. Look for PCI-X systems with SATA in the near future to provide more ports and more throughput than either IDE or PCI. _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
