ATA-ATAPI.COM
by Hale Landis
Information, Test Software and Consulting
Services
for Developers of Products using
ATA (IDE/EIDE), Serial ATA (SATA), ATAPI
and Other Interfaces
ATA-ATAPI.COM EXISTS TO HELP DEVELOPERS OF ATA AND ATAPI HARDWARE AND
SOFTWARE PRODUCTS.
We welcome inquiries concerning research, development and testing of such
products. We provide a wide range of consulting services for the development of
ATA and ATAPI devices including: design and design reviews; hardware, firmware
and software development; testing software and testing services; and ATA/ATAPI
training classes.
And this site is a great resource for anyone seeking up-to-date and correct
information about the ATA and ATAPI interfaces and some related items. Even if
you are not a developer you may find lots of useful information here to help you
understand the ATA and ATAPI interfaces and some other related items (for
example, see Hale's How It Works documents).
Thinking about buying a Serial ATA system and drive?
READ THIS! The Serial ATA (or SATA) products that are now shipping and
available in your local computer store may not be the most reliable products.
Testing of SATA products with tools such ATACT program are finding a variety of
problems. These problems are timeout errors, data compare errors, and strange
status errors. These problems are being reported by a large number of people
doing SATA product testing. Hale's advice at this time is be very careful - make
sure you can return the SATA product your purchased if it does not perform as
you expect. See the ATACT link above for some ATACT log files showing
both normal testing of a parallel ATA (PATA) drive (no errors!) and testing of a
SATA drive (lots of errors!).
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PLEASE READ THIS!
ATA-ATAPI.COM DOES NOT PROVIDE TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR ATA OR ATAPI
PRODUCTS.
ATA-ATAPI.COM DOES NOT PROVIDE OS DEVICE DRIVERS FOR ATA OR ATAPI PRODUCTS.
ATA-ATAPI.COM DOES NOT PROVIDE FIRMWARE UPDATES FOR ATA OR ATAPI PRODUCTS.
ATA-ATAPI.COM DOES NOT MANUFACTURE ATA OR ATAPI DEVICES.
ATA-ATAPI.COM DOES NOT SELL HARDWARE OR OS DEVICE DRIVERS.
YOU MUST CONTACT THE MANUFACTURER OF YOUR HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE PRODUCT
FOR TECHNICAL SUPPORT, OS DEVICE DRIVERS AND SOFTWARE OR FIRMWARE UPDATES.
Note that firmware and software products are generally copyrighted
materials. ATA-ATAPI.COM can not redistribute the copyrighted materials of
others. You must contact the hardware or software product manufacturer to
obtain such items. For example, the old DOS ATAPI CD-ROM real mode device
drivers, commonly known as ATAPICD.SYS (or maybe IDECD.SYS) and MSCDEX.EXE,
are copyrighted by Microsoft and sometimes also by the CD-ROM hardware
manufacturer. Note that MSCDEX.EXE can be found on most Win9x systems in the
"\windows\command" directory.
Please do not send email asking for help installing your new CD-ROM or
DVD drive. Please do not send email asking why your CD-ROM or DVD drive has
quiting working. Please do not send email asking for updated drivers for
your device. ATA-ATAPI.COM does not provide these product specific technical
support services.
Click
here for the ONLY advice we can offer to you for these product support
problems. |
Index
What are ATA, ATAPI, IDE, EIDE, ... ?
ATA and ATAPI are the real names for the mass storage device interface
that is frequently called IDE and EIDE. IDE and EIDE are mostly used by
marketing people who do not know what they are selling and by writers for
magazines who do not know what they are writing about.
What does ATA mean? It stands for AT Attachment but most people
don't remember what an AT is anymore (anyone remember the IBM PC/AT?). And
what about ATAPI? It stands for ATA Packet Interface.
ATA/ATAPI is the most popular device interface today. Of the approximately
140 million hard disk drives made in the last year, 90+ percent are ATA. The
remainder are various types of SCSI inteface drives. And the vast majority of
CD-ROM drives are ATAPI devices. Most PCMCIA and CFA mass storage devices are
also ATA or ATAPI devices.
The ATA and ATA/ATAPI standards are developed and published by:
ANSI NCITS T13
T13 is the actual standards committee that develops and maintains the ATA and
ATA/ATAPI standards. Visit the T13 web site for the latest information on
meeting schedules, proposals for the next version of ATA/ATAPI and copies of the
draft standards to review. T13 is always looking for review comments from
anyone. You do not need to be a member of T13 to attend a T13 meeting or to
submit a comment on any of the committee's proposals or documents.
History of ATA and ATAPI
Here is the true and correct history of ATA and ATAPI:
What is Serial ATA (SATA)?
Serial ATA or SATA is the newest version of the ATA interface. SATA claims to
support all the traditional ATA functions but does it over an interface cable
with only 7 wires (instead of the normal 40 wires for traditional parallel ATA
interfaces). SATA also claims it will be faster but the history of serial
interfaces indicates you must be careful when reading such speed claims.
Discussing SATA is difficult because: a) SATA was created by a "secret
society" that prohibits members from talking outside of their meetings, b)
current SATA documents are available only to the members of the "secret
society", c) by the time a SATA document is made public it is basically obsolete
and has been replaced by a new but secret SATA document, d) the SATA "secret
society" is working with the Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) committee(s) to also
replace SCSI, e) the SATA documents that are public may be or will be
re-published (probably with some changes?) by the T10 and T13 standards
committees. All of this makes SATA a very confusing mess!
There is no doubt that SATA is in your future. SATA hard disk drives and PCI
bus SATA host controllers are shipping today. And there are some motherboards
shipping today with SATA interfaces. If SATA is successful it will probably
replace traditional parallel ATA with a few years.
Read more about SATA, SATA-1, SATA-2 and Serial Attached SCSI (yep, they are
all related):
CLICK HERE!
Why are you here? What do you need?
Here you will find Hale's HIW How It Works documents and Hale's ATA and ATAPI
test software.
Did you read the notice at the top of this page? This site does not
provide technical support, OS device drivers or firmware updates for your ATA or
ATAPI product! Do not waste your time by sending an email asking why your CD-ROM
drive has quit working on your Win9x system. Instead contact the manufacturer of
your hardware or software product.
All That Other Stuff
ATA-ATAPI.COM is the Internet at its best! Like most dot-com web
sites, ATA-ATAPI.COM has: a) no business plan, b) expenses that exceed revenues
(and the management has not a single idea that would fix that problem), and c)
grand visions of the future when ATA-ATAPI.COM will be the most popular site on
the net.
Did you read the notice at the top of this page? This site does not
provide technical support, OS device drivers or firmware updates for your ATA or
ATAPI product! Do not waste your time by sending an email asking why your CD-ROM
drive has quit working on your Win9x system. Instead contact the manufacturer of
your hardware or software product.
If you would like to contact the management of ATA-ATAPI.COM send an email to
Hale Landis (CEO, COO, CFO, CTO, etc):
Notice to anyone providing a link to this site: This site replaces all
of the email addresses at sugs.talisman.com
(such as info@sugs.talisman.com). Please update the links on your web pages and
please provide a link only to http://ata-atapi.com
or to http://www.ata-atapi.com. Any other
link, including links that specify additional directory or file information, are
subject to change and may not work in the future.
This site is hosted by the
G4Coop . The G4Coop hosts many interesting
web sites that you should visit. Several members of the G4Coop also edit and
publish the Linux Weekly News.
If you are not reading the Linux Weekly News then you should start today!
Some other notices about this site:
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SPAM EMAIL FROM ATA-ATAPI.COM?
Starting in June 2002 spam email with a forged From: address was sent
from serveral ISP email accounts and various company (.com) email servers --
this spam email claims to come from ATA-ATAPI.COM. This spam email did
NOT come from ATA-ATAPI.COM. ATA-ATAPI.COM never sends bulk/spam
email! |
THE DMCA AND ATA-ATAPI.COM
If recent rulings in US court cases concerning various aspects of the US
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) continue to uphold the validity of
the DMCA then some information that Hale has made available during the last
10 years may need to be removed from this web site. This may include some of
Hale's HIW documents, source code or even the free/demo versions of ATA/ATAPI
testing software.
The Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a good source of information
concerning the ongoing debate over the DMCA. |
Copyleft 1998-2003 by Hale Landis.
This page was last updated on 22 September 2003.
