Re: IDE termination (was Re: UDMA 133 on a 40 pin cable)

[Andre Hedrick]

On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, John Bradford wrote:

> > > I don't think ATA66+ controllers can be within spec if they don't detect 
> > > 40 vs 80 pin cables.
> > 
> > I wish. Alas not in the real world.
> 
> Something that occurs to me, which is somewhat related to this:
> 
> My understanding, (which might be wrong) is that termination of the
> IDE bus is partly handled by each connected devicem rather like modern
> floppy drives, (in contrast to SCSI, 10-base-2, old floppy drives etc,
> where the termination is handled by devices at the physical ends of
> the cable).
> 
> So if you connnect a really old IDE disk, say a 20 Mb one, and an
> ATA-100 one to the same bus, is the termination then out of spec,
> (analogous to using passive terminators on anything other than a SCSI-1
> bus), because presumably the termination requirements are stricter for
> the higher bus speed and signaling on both edges?

All are self terminating, and are effected by the M:S:C jumpers for
their responses.  Things like leak current times and other events that are
based on various decay rates against an assumed Z value for a given
ribbon+devices+host combination will change things rudely.

There are issues of shadow registers and pattern responses.

But you got the swing of it!

Cheers,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group