It looks like Intel’s new southbridge ICH8 will not support PATA, which is what most people still use to connect their DVD Burners and other optical drives.
“Intel Confidential” discussing Intel’s upcoming ICH8 South Bridge that will be used in future chipsets. Besides adding support for up to 10 USB ports (up from 8 in ICH7), 6 Serial ATA ports (compared to 4 in ICH7), and “Integrated Advanced Fan Speed Control” the most notable new feature of the new South Bridge is its removal for legacy devices such as AC’97 audio and Parallel ATA.
I am all for leaving old technology behind like the old serial connections and whatnot, but getting rid of parallel ATA is something I don’t know if I am ready for, as I have two large sized hard drives that I would like to continue to use when I upgrade my computer.








If your drive is worth saving(>200gb), you may want to invest in an external enclosure or a ide-usb2 cable.
It should also be fairly simple to install a PCI IDE controller (example = http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815104214 , $14 @ Newegg) to support your older devices.
Yes, but don’t you both think it is a little early to drop support for such drives? Even one PATA would be fine, as that could support two drives, ie a dvd burner and my 250 gig hd.
Why should I have to spend another 20-50 on a ide controller or external enclosure? Heck they still have db-9 mouse and kb connectors, and serial ports…
Just my 2 cents.
personal loans Keyword doesn’t matter
They make $10 IDE-SATA adapters for CD-ROMs and hard drives. They work pretty well. Just search eBay for “SATA IDE” and I’m sure you’ll find them. Then they look exactly like SATA drives.