Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Parallel ATA
Parallel ATA (PATA), originally AT Attachment, also known as Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE), is a standard interface designed for IBM PC-compatible computers. It was first developed by Western Digital and Compaq in 1986 for compatible hard drives and CD or DVD drives. The connection is used for computer storage such as hard disk, floppy disk,[citation needed][not verified in body][improper synthesis?] optical disk, and tape.
The standard is maintained by the X3/INCITS committee. It uses the underlying AT Attachment (ATA) and AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI) standards.
The Parallel ATA standard is the result of a long history of incremental technical development, which began with the original AT Attachment interface, developed for use in early PC AT equipment. The ATA interface itself evolved in several stages from Western Digital's original Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface. As a result, many near-synonyms for ATA/ATAPI and its previous incarnations are still in common informal use, in particular Extended IDE (EIDE) and Ultra ATA (UATA). After the introduction of SATA in 2003, the original ATA was renamed to Parallel ATA, or PATA for short.
Parallel ATA cables have a maximum allowable length of 18 in (457 mm). Because of this limit, the technology normally appears as an internal computer storage interface. For many years, ATA provided the most common and the least expensive interface for this application. It has largely been replaced by SATA in newer systems.
The standard was originally conceived as the "AT Bus Attachment", officially called "AT Attachment" and abbreviated "ATA" because its primary feature was a direct connection to the 16-bit ISA bus introduced with the IBM PC/AT. The original ATA specifications published by the standards committees use the name "AT Attachment". The "AT" in the IBM PC/AT referred to "Advanced Technology" so ATA has also been referred to as "Advanced Technology Attachment". When a newer Serial ATA (SATA) was introduced in 2003, the original ATA was renamed to Parallel ATA, or PATA for short.
Physical ATA interfaces became a standard component in PCs, initially on host bus adapters, sometimes on a sound card but ultimately as two physical interfaces embedded in a Southbridge chip on a motherboard. Called the "primary" and "secondary" ATA interfaces, they were assigned to I/O base addresses 0x1F0-0x1F7 and 0x170-0x177 on ISA bus systems. They were replaced by SATA interfaces.
The first version of what is now called the ATA/ATAPI interface was developed by Western Digital under the name Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE). Together with Compaq (the initial customer), they worked with various disk drive manufacturers to develop and ship early products with the goal of remaining software compatible with the existing IBM PC hard drive interface. The first such drives appeared internally in Compaq PCs in 1986 and were first separately offered by Conner Peripherals as the CP342 in June 1987.
The term Integrated Drive Electronics refers to the drive controller being integrated into the drive, as opposed to a separate controller situated at the other side of the connection cable to the drive. On an IBM PC compatible, CP/M machine, or similar, this was typically a card installed on a motherboard. The interface cards used to connect a parallel ATA drive to, for example, an ISA Slot, are not drive controllers: they are merely bridges between the host bus and the ATA interface. Since the original ATA interface is essentially just a 16-bit ISA bus, the bridge was especially simple in case of an ATA connector being located on an ISA interface card. The integrated controller presented the drive to the host computer as an array of 512-byte blocks with a relatively simple command interface. This relieved the mainboard and interface cards in the host computer of the chores of stepping the disk head arm, moving the head arm in and out, and so on, as had to be done with earlier ST-506 and ESDI hard drives. All of these low-level details of the mechanical operation of the drive were now handled by the controller on the drive itself. This also eliminated the need to design a single controller that could handle many different types of drives, since the controller could be unique for the drive. The host need only to ask for a particular sector, or block, to be read or written, and either accept the data from the drive or send the data to it.
Hub AI
Parallel ATA AI simulator
(@Parallel ATA_simulator)
Parallel ATA
Parallel ATA (PATA), originally AT Attachment, also known as Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE), is a standard interface designed for IBM PC-compatible computers. It was first developed by Western Digital and Compaq in 1986 for compatible hard drives and CD or DVD drives. The connection is used for computer storage such as hard disk, floppy disk,[citation needed][not verified in body][improper synthesis?] optical disk, and tape.
The standard is maintained by the X3/INCITS committee. It uses the underlying AT Attachment (ATA) and AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI) standards.
The Parallel ATA standard is the result of a long history of incremental technical development, which began with the original AT Attachment interface, developed for use in early PC AT equipment. The ATA interface itself evolved in several stages from Western Digital's original Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface. As a result, many near-synonyms for ATA/ATAPI and its previous incarnations are still in common informal use, in particular Extended IDE (EIDE) and Ultra ATA (UATA). After the introduction of SATA in 2003, the original ATA was renamed to Parallel ATA, or PATA for short.
Parallel ATA cables have a maximum allowable length of 18 in (457 mm). Because of this limit, the technology normally appears as an internal computer storage interface. For many years, ATA provided the most common and the least expensive interface for this application. It has largely been replaced by SATA in newer systems.
The standard was originally conceived as the "AT Bus Attachment", officially called "AT Attachment" and abbreviated "ATA" because its primary feature was a direct connection to the 16-bit ISA bus introduced with the IBM PC/AT. The original ATA specifications published by the standards committees use the name "AT Attachment". The "AT" in the IBM PC/AT referred to "Advanced Technology" so ATA has also been referred to as "Advanced Technology Attachment". When a newer Serial ATA (SATA) was introduced in 2003, the original ATA was renamed to Parallel ATA, or PATA for short.
Physical ATA interfaces became a standard component in PCs, initially on host bus adapters, sometimes on a sound card but ultimately as two physical interfaces embedded in a Southbridge chip on a motherboard. Called the "primary" and "secondary" ATA interfaces, they were assigned to I/O base addresses 0x1F0-0x1F7 and 0x170-0x177 on ISA bus systems. They were replaced by SATA interfaces.
The first version of what is now called the ATA/ATAPI interface was developed by Western Digital under the name Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE). Together with Compaq (the initial customer), they worked with various disk drive manufacturers to develop and ship early products with the goal of remaining software compatible with the existing IBM PC hard drive interface. The first such drives appeared internally in Compaq PCs in 1986 and were first separately offered by Conner Peripherals as the CP342 in June 1987.
The term Integrated Drive Electronics refers to the drive controller being integrated into the drive, as opposed to a separate controller situated at the other side of the connection cable to the drive. On an IBM PC compatible, CP/M machine, or similar, this was typically a card installed on a motherboard. The interface cards used to connect a parallel ATA drive to, for example, an ISA Slot, are not drive controllers: they are merely bridges between the host bus and the ATA interface. Since the original ATA interface is essentially just a 16-bit ISA bus, the bridge was especially simple in case of an ATA connector being located on an ISA interface card. The integrated controller presented the drive to the host computer as an array of 512-byte blocks with a relatively simple command interface. This relieved the mainboard and interface cards in the host computer of the chores of stepping the disk head arm, moving the head arm in and out, and so on, as had to be done with earlier ST-506 and ESDI hard drives. All of these low-level details of the mechanical operation of the drive were now handled by the controller on the drive itself. This also eliminated the need to design a single controller that could handle many different types of drives, since the controller could be unique for the drive. The host need only to ask for a particular sector, or block, to be read or written, and either accept the data from the drive or send the data to it.