On 1 October 2017 at 22:22, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > Q: Is "SATA": "Serial ATA" or "Serial AT Attachment"?
Serial ATA, to the best of my recollection. > (Did they reference > an acronym without referencing the terms of the acronym, again?) Yes. > I am going to guess that "PARALLEL ATA" came into being as a NAME, after > "SATA", solely to differentiate it. Yes, this is correct. However, it does not cover why the term "ATA" started to get used more than "IDE". I suspect there were 2 reasons. [1] IDE is of course overloaded, and also means "Integrated Development Environment". Plus "Serial IDE" would come out as "side" which is a normal English word and thus potentially confusing, unlike "sata" -- which isn't a word -- and "pata" which sounds like "patter" but was less important as it was a retrospective renaming. The real reason, I suspect, is that when optical drives -- i.e. CD drives -- that attached to the IDE interface came along, they needed a term for them. Yes, they had "integrated drive electronics" but so did all CD drives. They were not "IDE compatible" -- they needed different drivers, and I believe needed some rudimentary degree of awareness from the IDE controller electronics and firmware. Worse still, they re-used the same connector as used for Panasonic interface CD drives. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~theom/electronics/panasoniccd.html There was also a proprietary Sony interface, which used the same connector as the PC floppy drive IDC connector: http://discussions.virtualdr.com/showthread.php?104601-Unusual-CD-Interface And finally there was a Mitsumi interface as well: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/cd/confProprietary-c.html Some ISA sound cards had all 3 interfaces. [2] The other reason, I personally suspect, is that the term used for the interface of CD drives that connected to the IDE bus was "ATAPI": "AT Attachment Packet Interface". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATA_Packet_Interface In my world, anyway, nobody had heard of ATA drives until ATAPI came along. This popularised the term ATA, and then Serial ATA came along and plain old parallel IDE was renamed parallel ATA, PATA. > Similarly to how "DOUBLE Density" > bacame a name before "SINGLE Density" ("SINGLE" was only needed later, to > differentiate it). Good point. Hadn't thought of that. Before my time! > And how "WORLD WAR TWO" was used as a name before > "WORLD WAR ONE" was ever used as a name ("The Great War" got renamed when it > was important to compare and differentiate it it from its successor). _Way_ before my time. Although sadly I very much fear that WW3 will be in my time. Indeed, might be the end of it. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
