H/I - Secondary and Primary IDE Connectors
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Secondary and Primary IDE ConnectorsThe secondary IDE connector is located next to the battery. The primary IDE connector is located near the edge of the motherboard. These connectors are used for all IDE devices. The primary device is normally connected to the primary controller, the CD-ROM drive is connected to the secondary controller, and any optional devices that are connected to the secondary controller, such as the CD-ROM drive cable, do not have a slave connector.

When connecting the IDE hard disk cables to the IDE hard disk connectors, maintain pin 1 orientation as illustrated in the graphic. The connectors are also keyed, in case a keyed cable is used. The primary and secondary IDE controllers are indicated in the graphic.

Supported hard disk features

  • The motherboard provides two independent synchronous DMA bus-mastering PCI IDE interfaces that support fast IDE PIO Mode 3, Mode 4, Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI), and Ultra Advanced Technology Attachment (UATA) interface devices at speeds of 33/66/100 megahertz (MHz).
  • It is compliant to ATA 4 and 5 specifications.
  • The motherboard BIOS supports Logical Block Addressing (LBA) and Extended Cylinder Head Sector (ECHS) translation modes.
  • The BIOS Setup utility automatically detects the IDE device transfer rate and translation mode. This motherboard includes LS-120 support.

Normally, programmed I/O operations require a substantial amount of CPU bandwidth. In true multi-tasking operating systems, the CPU bandwidth, which is freed up by using bus-mastering IDE, can be used to complete other tasks while disk transfers occur. When used in conjunction with the appropriate driver, the IDE interface can operate as a PCI master capable of supporting Ultra ATA devices with transfer rates of up to 66 megabytes per second (MBps).