Ultra DMA and ATA

[DJ-dOoK]

I am just wondering what the difference is between ultra DMA and ATA hard disks.

Thanks.

------------------
One day, the DJ declared! Let this OS be taken to the world, and Linux was introduced to many frustrated windows users!

[Craig McPherson]

Ultra ATA and Ultra DMA are the same thing.

[DJ-dOoK]

Ok
I read some price lists of hard drives and some are said to be ultra dma and others ATA. What are they on about and what is this ultra DMA about anyway?

------------------
One day, the DJ declared! Let this OS be taken to the world, and Linux was introduced to many frustrated windows users!

[Craig McPherson]

DMA - Direct Memory Access
ATA - AT Attachment

Short for AT Attachment, a disk drive implementation that integrates the controller on the disk drive itself. There are several versions of ATA, all developed by the Small Form Factor (SFF) Committee...

Ultra-ATA: Also called Ultra-DMA, ATA-33, and DMA-33, supports multiword DMA mode 3 running at 33 MBps.

ATA/66: A new version of ATA proposed by Quantum Corporation, and supported by Intel, that will double ATA's throughput to 66 MBps. The first ATA/66 computers are expected to be available in the first half of 1999.


ATA/100 drives and controllers are out now -- probably a little bit of an overkill at the present, though. Current hard drives just aren't fast enough to saturate an ATA/100 channel, although they will be in the future.