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Parallel ATA facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
Parallel ATA (PATA) connector on a motherboard - 34 and 40 pin- fs PNr°0267
ATA/ATAPI connector
IDE cable 40 pin & 80 pin
80 pin and 40 pin cables to connect the drives

Parallel ATA is a way to connect storage devices, such as Hard disks, solid-state drives, and CD-ROM drives inside personal computers. The standard is maintained by X3/INCITS committee T13.

It used to be called Advanced Technology Attachment with Packet Interface (ATA/ATAPI). ATA/ATAPI is the result of a long history of development. It is an evolution of the AT Attachment Interface, which was itself evolved in several stages from Western Digital's original Integrated Drive Electronics interface. As a result, many near-synonyms for ATA/ATAPI and its previous incarnations exist, including abbreviations such as IDE which are still in common informal use. With the market introduction of Serial ATA in 2003, the original ATA was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA).

Parallel ATA standards allow cable lengths up to only 18 inches (46 centimeters). Because of this length limit the technology normally appears as an internal computer storage interface. For many years ATA provided the most common and the least expensive interface for this application. As of 2007, it has largely been replaced by Serial ATA (SATA) in new systems.

Images for kids

  • 1992 80386 PC AMD 386DX-40 no onboard IDE floppy serial parallel sound video or network

    Example of a 1992 80386 PC motherboard with nothing built in other than memory, keyboard, processor, cache, realtime clock, and slots. Such basic motherboards could have been outfitted with either the ST-506 or ATA interface, but usually not both. A single 2-drive ATA interface and a floppy interface was added to this system via the 16-bit ISA card.

  • Samsung HS081HA - 80 pin parallel ATA interface-9696

    80 pin parallel ATA interface on a 1.8" hard disk

  • ATA cables

    Comparison between ATA cables: 40-conductor ribbon cable (top), and 80-conductor ribbon cable (bottom). In both cases, a 40-pin female connector is used.

  • PATA-Connectors-exposed

    Differences between connectors

  • LG Super Multi GSA-E40N - PATA 2 USB Adapter-8672

    PATA to USB Adapter. It is mounted on the rear of a DVD-RW optical drive inside an external case

  • Compact Flash is just a miniature IDE-ATA interface

    Compact flash is a miniature ATA interface, slightly modified to be able to also supply power to the CF device.

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Integrated Drive Electronics para niños

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