IDC OR IDE?

[Shrimpersfan]

Hi there.

 

I am looking to purchase a new motherboard and need one with an IDE connection on it. From looking on Ebuyer, i noticed that many of their Intel boards have IDC connections.

 

What i was wondering was, is IDC the same as IDE?

[kmount]

IDC can mean many types of connector, can you show us an example motherboard?

[Shrimpersfan]

Gigabyte GA-945GCM-S2L i945GC Socket 775 onboard VGA 6 channel audio mATX Motherboard - Ebuyer

[kmount]

In that context yes, it means there's a single socket available so you can run two devices from it.

 

EDIT:

I was going to harp on about it, but the "Standard" specification shows it more plainly.

 

Storage Ports Configuration 1 x ATA, 4 x SATA

[sparkeh]

Well the board overview shows it has 1 ATA device (IDE) so thats it.

[Shrimpersfan]

ah so ATA = IDE?

[kmount]

Long story there, but yes.

 

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDMA]Nice long read here to explain![/ame]

[sparkeh]

ah so ATA = IDE?

 

Bingo, another part of the acronym soup of computing, ATA is the ANSI name for IDE.

 

Oh and of course, ATA has been retrospectively renamed PATA after the release of SATA

[torledo]

Isn't the IDE connector just another type of IDC connector that is specificially used for connecting ATA hard drives ?

 

The clue presumably is the name, the DC in IDC stands for displacement connector/connection.....and that's basically how an IDE ribbon cable is terminated as are many other types of PC and telecoms cabling connections.

 

Am i right, or have i got that totally wrong ?

 

This is the first time i've hears the acronym IDC being used to describe an IDE connection.

[Shrimpersfan]

Thanks guys.

 

I work as a software engineer so hardware isn't really my speciality.

 

Thanks again

[kmount]

That's my understanding torledo

[synaesthesia]

You'll be quite safe, the only boards totally sans a single IDE connector are some of the very recent motherboards for the Core i7 hardware and a couple of miniature PC motherboards - anything standard is still equipped with at least 1.

[PeterW]

You'll be quite safe, the only boards totally sans a single IDE connector are some of the very recent motherboards for the Core i7 hardware and a couple of miniature PC motherboards - anything standard is still equipped with at least 1.

 

I have an Intel DG45ID sat here that says otherwise:p

 

Although sure most will still have a single connector.

[laserblazer]

Be a little careful. I got a new mobo a while back that had 1 IDE but it was software driven, ie. the BIOS didn't recognise it, so I couldn't boot from the IDE optical drive. I got around it by buying a SATA DVD drive.

 

I don't know if this a common problem.

[PeterW]

I don't know if this a common problem.

 

Sounds like a BIOS bug, although your right modern Intel chipsets don't have IDE its actually driven from a Jmicron/Promise/Marvell controller chip. These sometimes have compatability issues although you should be able to boot form them.