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Thread: IDE controler cards

  1. #1
    Senior Member Praetorian's Avatar
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    IDE controler cards

    Sinec I only have 2 ide slots on my motherboard, and I can have a limited amount of devices on each slot, can I use an IDE controler card to add more devices? I mean without disrupting my onboard controler. Should I get a SCSI card or external storage instead?
    This will all be over before you can say Cat in a Hat.

  2. #2
    Member F4_Hunter's Avatar
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    You certainly can. I use a Promise brand IDE controller with my motherboard's so I can have up to 8 IDE devices. It's working real good.

    -F4

  3. #3
    Member MaxVal's Avatar
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    Love those Promise ATA cards!
    I have 4 systems that I use personally, and all have them!
    Look carefully and The U/66 card can be had for $20 or so. The U/100 card is unnecessary, as no detectable advantage would be gained
    If your considering a bunch of disks, SCSI would be the best bet as one Ultra card could handle up to 13 disks!

    MAX

  4. #4
    Member Xeroid's Avatar
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    I ran into the same problem as you did. (Too many drives & not enough IDE connections). A Promise card would be an excellent choice. I have run one for 2+ years without any problems(Promise 66). You can even boot to a hard disk drive on a Promise card. (go into BIOS and set your p.c. to boot to SCSI). Your bios will recognize the Promise controller as a SCSI controller. (this is normal)

    I have the IDE ports on my motherboard connected to my CD, CDRW, & Zip disk drives. My hard disk drives are on the Promise controller.

    Mike

  5. #5
    Member ArtShapiro's Avatar
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    I too have had excellent results with an aftermarket IDE controller, and don't have any caveats or otherwise bad things to report. I happened to pick up a used IWill Ultra ATA 66 controller off of eBay, and it has performed without incident for a year on this machine, using a Soyo K7VTA mb. I suppose most folks don't need an extra controller, but nonetheless one doesn't hear many reports of problems; you probably can go this route without the expectation of weird system conflicts or other bad results.

    Art

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