Chapter 5: Technical Information
NOTE:
This chapter is indented for experienced users only, and only to be used as a
reference. Changes to or modify any of the components/ connectors listed herein
can and will seriously damage your system, including the motherboard, CPU and/or
any other hardware.
You do not need to read this chapter to configure your motherboard. If you are not
sure about the details listed herein, please skip and disregard them.
Enhanced
IDE
IDE has been used in computer systems for some time, and has been a cheap
solution to data storage. It has now been realised that traditional IDE has its
limitations and thus needed to be improved. This was where Enhanced IDE came
from. The main developments to the IDE interface are:
•
Support hard drives of capacity greater than 528MB. This is achieved through
BIOS changes.
•
Improved data transfer rates. Transfer rates of 1-3MB/sec were the best to be
expected from older IDE drives. With local bus technology this increased to about
6MB/sec. Now with multimedia applications, requiring vast amounts of
information, even faster transfers rates were needed. Now drives with Enhanced
IDE controllers can deliver up to 13MB/sec which is in the region of SCSI-2
performance.
•
Dual-IDE channels have now been added which allows up to four IDE drives to be
supported by the system. Each channel supporting two IDE devices.
•
Non disk IDE peripherals have been developed (IDE CD-ROMs, IDE tape
streamers) which can be simply attached to the one channel requiring no special
hardware (requiring the use of an ISA slot) or complicated drivers. This is a
standard interface meaning that any IDE CD-ROM or tape streamer can be
attached.
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