Ultra ATA may be a breed whose time in the sun has come and gone, yet many ATA devices have years of useful life left. What’s a frugal buyer to do when chipset companies like Intel eliminate this legacy interface from new products? Serial ATA optical drives were slow in coming and add-in ATA controllers found on most current motherboards were only a stopgap measure as low-cost drives entered the market. But have you considered an adapter?

Serial ATA to Ultra ATA adapters used to be expensive and problematic, but standardization has allowed prices to drop at the same time as compatibility improves. TekGems sent us a few of its latest products, but are they good enough or cheap enough to meet SysOpt’s value standards?