On  8 Dec 98 at 9:59, Bill & Andrea Lee wrote:

> Francisco Novo Mesegue wrote:
> >
> > Recently I read an article written by John Q. Chin, from the
> > Nospin Group.,
>
> > >"Finally, it should be noted that using a CD-ROM drive on the
> > >same IDE channel as a hard drive will usually adversely affect
> > >the performance of the hard drive.

  CD-ROM drives read data at a fraction of the speed that modern hard
drives are capable of.  As a result, many early IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM
drives implemented only the "PIO mode 1" level of IDE interface.  And
on IDE controllers, that meant that any other device on the same
channel was also limited to that PIO mode, even if it was capable of
faster modes.
  Things have changed.  Modern CD-ROM drives support higher PIO
modes, even though they generally can't take advantage of them.  And
UDMA controllers (which can handle IDE and EIDE drives) allow
different modes for each device instead of a single mode per
channel.

  So John's advice above is still useful when upgrading an old system
or taking advantage of spare parts, but isn't something to worry
about if you're buying a new motherboard and/or CD-ROM drive.

David G

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