"doc said:
Hi,
I'm looking not for a specific motherboard, but for a motherboard that
has 4xSATA and 4xUDMA and only one processor slot. I've found Gigabyte
K8N Pro (or something like that) that has socket 745 but the board is
no longer on sale in Croatia (or I haven't found any not sold yet)...
Does anybody here have any info about any motherboard that has 4xUDMA
(for 8 discs)?
Please reply
There are two kinds of chipsets in the world. The Intel approach
is to gradually wean the users off of PATA. The Southbridge went
from 2 PATA plus 2 SATA connectors to 1 PATA plus 4 SATA connectors.
To compensate for this mix of connectors, some motherboard makers
included a separate PATA controller, like an ITE8212. That would
get you a total of three PATA connectors, for six PATA disks.
But that is only an issue for Intel motherboards.
Other chipset makers are handling the transition period between
SATA and PATA a bit different. They offer 2 PATA connectors plus
4 SATA connectors. Thus, you can have four disks of each type.
There are even motherboards that include a separate four port
SATA RAID controller. The emphasis is still on SATA, but PATA
was not forgotten. Their minimum was still the traditional
2 PATA connectors for a total of 4 PATA drives.
You can always buy a motherboard and add a Promise TX2. The
Ultra133 version is compatible with disks larger than 137GB
and will compensate for a motherboard missing a lot of PATA
connectors. At one time, the Promise card was bundled with
certain Maxtor disk drives, so there should be used cards
floating around in the used market. The Ultra100 version is
also useful, if it has the right version of onboard BIOS
code in its flash chip.
PROMISE ULTRA133 TX2 PCI IDE Controller Card OEM $33 USD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102007
HTH,
Paul
