Chapter 7. The ATA/IDE Interface

An Overview of the IDE Interface

The interface used to connect disk drives to a PC is typically called IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics); however, the official name of this interface is ATA (AT Attachment). The ATA designation refers to the fact that this interface was originally designed to connect a combined drive and controller directly to the 16-bit bus found in the 1984 vintage IBM PC-AT (Advanced Technology) and compatible computers. The AT bus is otherwise known as the ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) bus. Although ATA is the official name of the interface, IDE is a marketing term originated by some of the drive manufacturers to describe the drive/controller combination used in drives with the ATA ...

Get Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 21st Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.