For those who have been working with computers for years, you may be familiar with the term Parallel ATA or PATA. PATA is also known as ATA or IDE, and refers to a connectivity standard for storage devices that was widely used in older computer systems.
PATA was commonly used to connect hard drives, CD-ROMs, and DVD-ROMs to the motherboard via a ribbon cable. The original version of PATA was called Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE), and it was developed by Western Digital. Over the years, PATA evolved and its speeds improved, with versions ranging from 16 megabytes per second to 133 megabytes per second.
While PATA technology is not commonly used in newer systems, it can still be found in legacy equipment. If you are working with legacy equipment that features PATA devices, it is important to understand the limitations of this technology.
One limitation of PATA is that it only supports up to two devices per channel. The channel is the connection between the motherboard and the PATA device. On a PATA ribbon cable, the first device connected is referred to as device 0, while the second device is device 1.
There are two types of PATA ribbon cables: the 40 wire cable and the 80 wire cable. The 40 wire cable was the original PATA cable, while the 80 wire cable was developed to increase speeds and minimize crosstalk between wires.
On a 40 wire cable, the first device is connected to device 0, while the second device is connected to device 1. On an 80 wire cable, this is reversed, with device 1 being the first interface on the cable and device 0 being at the end.
In terms of physical connectors, PATA connectors are much larger than SATA connectors. A PATA connector has 40 pins and is symmetrical, with a missing pin that allows for proper orientation of the cable. On the other hand, a SATA connector has just 7 pins and is much smaller in size.
In summary, PATA is a legacy technology that is not commonly used in newer systems. If you are working with legacy equipment that features PATA devices, it is important to understand the limitations of this technology, such as the fact that it only supports up to two devices per channel. Additionally, PATA connectors are much larger than SATA connectors, which take up much less space inside newer systems.