Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) Interface
The integrated drive electronics (IDE) interface was the principal mass storage interface for desktop PCs for many years.
- referred to as parallel advanced technology attachment (PATA)
- The enhanced IDE (EIDE) bus interface uses 16-bit parallel data transfers
- motherboard supporting IDE may come with one or two host adapters, called the IDE1 channel and the IDE2 channel
- may also be labelled primary (PRI IDE) and secondary (SEC IDE)
- A single IDE channel is now more typical if the motherboard also supports SATA
- Each IDE channel supports two devices, 0 and 1
- An EIDE cable typically has three color-coded connectors
- blue connector is for the motherboard port
- black (end) and grey (middle) connectors attach to devices 0 and 1 respectively
- When inserting a connector, pin 1 on the cable must be oriented with pin 1 on the port
- On the cable, pin 1 is identified with a red stripe
- connectors are also keyed to prevent them from being inserted the wrong way around
