ReActiveMicro MicroDrive Turbo, Owner'S Manual, Page: 48 / 55

MicroDrive Turbo 41 ReActiveMicro
IDE Interface Overview
Introduction
IDE is a generic name that could be given to any interface in which the controller
portion of the circuit is on the drive; ATA and Serial ATA refer to specific types of
IDE interfaces. Because the most popular form of the IDE interface was ATA, the
terms often are used interchangeably, even though on a technical level that is not
correct. What most people call IDE is more properly called ATA.
The primary advantage of ATA drives over the older separate controller based
interfaces and newer host bus interface alternatives, such as SCSI is cost.
Because the separate controller or host adapter is eliminated and the cable
connections are simplified, ATA drives cost much less than a standard controller and
drive combination.
An interesting fact is that the true name of the interface ATA (AT Attachment), which
refers to the fact that this interface originally was designed to connect a combined
drive and controller directly to the bus of the 1984 vintage IBM AT computer, the
first 16-bit bus capable personal computer - otherwise known as the ISA (Industry
Standard Architecture) bus.
IDE is a term originated by the marketing departments of some drive manufacturers
to describe the drive/controller combination used in drives with the ATA interface.
Because the ATA interface was directly integrated into virtually all PC motherboard
chipsets it became the dominate Hard Disk Drive setup.
The IDE Interface
IDE (officially referred to as ATA) is a generic term that applies to any drive with a
built-in disk controller. It is an ANSI standard, or more accurately an evolving
standard with various published standard versions. The term IDE can roughly apply
to any disk drive with a built-in controller, whereas ATA denotes a specific interface.
Referring to the original parallel version of the interface, what we call ATA originally
referred to a hard disk drive that plugged directly into a version of the AT-bus, more
commonly known as the 16-bit ISA bus.
ATA is a 16-bit parallel interface, meaning that 16 bits are transmitted simultaneously
down the interface cable. Integrating the controller and drive frees the controller and
drive engineers from having to adhere to the strict guidelines imposed by the earlier
interface standards. Engineers can design what essentially are custom drive and
controller implementations because no other controller will ever have to be
connected to the drive. The resulting drive and controller combinations can offer
higher performance than earlier standalone controller and drive setups. IDE drives
sometimes are called drives with embedded controllers.