Sata for cd drives ?

OK - the situation

I am looking at a motherboard with the 955x chipset, will probably go with abit however

There is only ONE IDE port, but SATA ports as far as the eye can see. Now-

I have 4 dvd drives and others that I need hooked up at all times. Right now my board has 3 ide ports (one native one, and one on the south bridge which is meant for raid but works fine with cd drives)

If i get one of those converters that lets you use ide devices through sata port will that work with the cd drives ? or is that strictly for hard drives

For the extra 2 cd drives, i DO have an IDE card, but the 955x board i'm looking at only has 2 PCI slots, and again PCI-1x slots as far as the eye can see, and the PCI slots are reserved for my tv card and my pcmcia converter, so i can plug in any laptop peripheral into my desktop (ie wireless, etc etc).

OK solutions ?? other than living with just 2 drives ?

You might be wanting to look at a differnt motherboard.
Even if you were to add an IDE controller later on, most on the market will not work with optical drives.

JaY_III said:

You might be wanting to look at a differnt motherboard.
Even if you were to add an IDE controller later on, most on the market will not work with optical drives.

Click to expand...

in that case can you recommend a board with:

DDR2 (4x)
2 IDE Ports
EMT64 support
at least 2 PCI slots.
PCI express

This one claims to be compatible with all IDE Drives. Hopefully you can find something a little cheaper.

Hope that helps!

Boards that fit your bill:
nForce4 NI8 SLi
http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/products.php?categories=1&model=280

955X
http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket775/p5wd2-p/overview.htm#
945P (pretty much the same board above)
http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket775/p5ld2-d/overview.htm


Lots out thier...
but the newer 945/955 chipsets dont ofetne have 2 IDE channells. They seem to be starting to fase out IDE with this generation of boards... looks like you might have 1 or 2 left before you lose IDE all together

yeah i noticed they are being phased out, HARD.- The ide sata controller cable looks like a good choice but they are pretty expensive

I've got a SATA dvdrw. You'll pay about twice as much though as i've only seen one company making them (Plextor).

Airpizza,
Did you notice any speed difference with the Plextor? also which one did you get?

dark_15 said:

This one claims to be compatible with all IDE Drives. Hopefully you can find something a little cheaper.

Click to expand...

It didn't work on my Sony combo DVD-RW/CD-RW (don't remember the model number, it's at home and I'm at the office). One Serillel converter came with my IC7-G, so I thought I'd try it on the Sony optical drive. On first boot after adding the Serillel the BIOS wouldn't pick up the Sony at all. After much fidgeting with the SATA settings in the BIOS, it finally recognized the CD-ROM only. I never could get the DVD side or the CD-R+RW side to work. Since I had plenty of IDE channels available and I was just "trying out" the free Serillel, I gave up and put the the Sony back on IDE. It's possible that with further futzing I could have gotten it to work on SATA with the converter.

My experience FWIW.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Showi...GWC+AD3300+Serial+ATA+to+IDE+Adapter+-+Retail

GOD BLESS YOU NEWEGG!!!

Mr_Fuchs said:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Showi...GWC+AD3300+Serial+ATA+to+IDE+Adapter+-+Retail

GOD BLESS YOU NEWEGG!!!

Click to expand...

just get some confermation that it works with optical drives as they can be funny

re: "Right now my board has 3 ide ports (one native one, and one on the south bridge which is meant for raid but works fine with cd drives)"

There seems to be a bit of confusion here - Native ports are on the Southbridge.

The i945 and i955 chipsets only have one PATA connector. Actually it's not a chipset limiteation - its the ICH7 southbridge they are paired with. The other PATA connectors are provided by an onboard ITE RAID controller. My P5WD2 manual indicates that they do not support optical (ATAPI) drives, but I've never tried.

Why not use USB or Firewire enclosures?