> >> You could use their 7506-4LP card for this. However, I think that this > >> would be overkill and the price of the card is > $200, and you would > >> also need 4 short IDE cables > > > > PATA cables must be in the range of 10-18 inches. Just one of > > several reasons to prefer SATA. > > You can always make your own. Or, have your local screw driver shop > make them for you. > > There are also adapters that plug in directly (female plug) or can be > used with short extension cables
It is easy to find PATA cables 24 and even 36 inches long, and yes, it is just a ribbon cable so you can easily make your own whatever length you want. BUT: PATA isn't terminated, and is "designed" (cough) to work with cables between 10 and 18 inches. If the cable is shorter than 10 inches or longer than 18 inches then you are more likely to lose data. PATA doesn't have error detection & correction on everything so your data is at risk. SATA does have error detection & correction on everything. SATA allows cables up to 1 meter long. (I don't know what the minimum is.) I think eSATA allows 2 meters? In addition, PATA cables are wide and block airflow. SATA cables are much narrower and *far* less of a problem with airflow. You can get round PATA cables, but those are said to reduce margins, so you're back to having a higher chance of data loss. SATA allows port multipliers, which are like a power cube tap, or a ethernet/firewire/usb hub. A port multiplier can fan out one SATA controller port to 15 drives. SATA has NCQ queuing, which is much better than the lame queuing that PATA has. Closer to SCSI's queuing. What we need is a SATA controller that documents how to use NCQ queuing so that BSD, Plan-9 and Linux can use it. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
