Talk:Parallel ATA/Archives/2020/January

Sound card as second IDE Interface

There is no question that for many years there were two physical IDE interfaces on most motherboards and that is how the article now reads. But the now hidden section called "Second ATA interface" asserts that proprietary CDROM interfaces found on some sound cards was a "second ATA interface" and it evolved into the second ATA interface without providing any RSes for this assertion. Since most early CDROMs were SCSI like it is most likely these interfaces were variants on SCSI and nothing like IDE (or ATA). In the absence of any RS I removed the section. @ZAC: reverted this with the comment that "Two IDE/PATA ifs were standard for many years" which is true but misses the point that AFAIK the proprietary CDROM ifs on sound cards were never IDE/PATA. So I reverted once again and opened this discussion. Tom94022 (talk) 07:28, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

It could be hard to find an RS but that's the way it happened: initially a single IDE port was sufficient (386/486) but when the "multimedia PC" emerged, an additional port for the CDROM drive was required. When that settled for the IDE format as well it more or less moved to the mainboard: non-early PCI mainboards all got those and the extra port on the soundcard vanished in parallel. Effectively, most people used the second port for the optical drive(s) for a very long time. So, the text isn't wrong at all but we'd have to find an RS. I'd suggest leaving it in and flagging it with {{cn}} is preferable to deleting right away. --Zac67 (talk) 17:46, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

My recollection is entirely different than yours; AFAIK IDE CD-ROMS came well after 2 IDE connectors were available on ISA/IDE cards and then on the MOB. Before IDE CDROMs they were all SCSI which is clearly stated in the cut article. I checked out the one reference in the clipped article and not unexpectedly the Soundblaster interface is SCSI, not IDE. This makes the articles "evolution" assertion highly dubious and at least part of the section has to be rewritten to reflect this new Soundblaster reference. Rather than rewrite I think it should remain hidden until the unlikely prospect that some RSes are found. Tom94022 (talk) 02:17, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, memories vary. SCSI CDROMs, especially on soundcards, were not that common. IDE CDROMs were preceeded by proprietary interfaces, most prominently Mitsumi, Panasonic, and Sony. Some soundcards had multiple connectors for these variants. That Soundblaster is one of the very few soundcards (if not the only one) with SCSI interface.

Since we don't currently have an RS, I grant that we should lower the evolutionary aspect and simple state that early soundcard did feature IDE interfaces before dual mobo interfaces became common. --Zac67 (talk) 07:30, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

According to Disk/Trend Reports CDROMs with IDE interface only began shipping in very limited volume in 1994 and became universal in 1995. Prior to that CDROM IFs were SCSI or proprietary. Disk/Trend also states that in 1994 the majority of HDDs had an intelligent interface (IDE or SCSI) which strongly suggests that by 1994 IDE HBAs having two interfaces were readily available and cheap. I don't know when IDE on the MoB started but there is no evidence that Soundcards ever had IDE much less preceded second physical IDE interface which first appeared on the HBA and then was embedded into the MoB. Also IDE supports two physical drives so a low cost system could have an IDE HDD and IDE CDROM on one physical interface albeit with performance problems. So it is not true that "early soundcard did feature IDE interfaces before dual mobo interfaces became common" and to say "early soundcard did feature IDE interfaces before dual mobo interfaces became common" seems undue. I continue to think it best we just leave this out until we can come up with a RS with a date for IDE on a soundcard and then maybe we can put something back. But again, keep in mind that dual IDE IFs on HBAs likely came first, integration onto the MoB came later and its not clear that its integration is particularly relevant to this article. Tom94022 (talk) 08:58, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

My recollection roughly parallels that of Zac's, at least from an Australia and S.East Asia perspective. Earliest sound card with CDROM drives I can remember had 1 proprietary port. Then 3 proprietary ports became common. Circa 1994, IDE replaced one of the proprietary ports, then soon became the only port. Then motherboards got 2 IDE ports and sound cards had no ports (and halved in size). SCSI CDROM drives were double the cost of a proprietary or IDE CDROM drive, so almost nobody took that route. Motherboards with a single IDE port had massive issues trying to share a hard drive and a CDROM drive (probably due to manufacturers not implementing the IDE standard properly), so people put hard drives and CDROM drives on separate IDE ports for a long time (I remember still having the occasional issue circa 2000). Eventually IDE was implemented properly and things became nice but it did take a awhile for that to happen.  Stepho  talk  12:18, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

There is no dispute that at some time some sound cards had an PATA port (not ATA-1 and most prevalent ATAPI) but it seems undue to have an entire section in the history section devoted to PATA on sound cards and labeled as "Second ATA Interface" when there is no evidence that it was any different than the PATA interfaces available on HBAs and MoBo's. It is worthy of note that the industry evolved to two physical interfaces on the MoBo which the article now does so state. I'll add a few words about on sound cards too but that's all that seems appropriate. Tom94022 (talk) 21:35, 20 January 2020 (UTC)