On Wed, 4 Oct 2017, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
I just pulled off a book from my shelf entitled "The SCSI Bus and IDE
Interface, Protocols, Applications and Programming", by Friedhelm
Schmidt, Addison-Wesley, 1995, ISBN 0-201-42284-0. (From the look and
feel of the book, this appears to be the first time I've cracked it.)
Here's what Mr. Schmidt has to say on the origins of IDE, pp. 37-38:
"The development of the IDE interface began in 1984, stimulated by the
Texan computer manufacturer, Compaq. The idea was to embed the hard
disk controller of an IBM AT compatible on the disk drive. Compaq
contacted the controller manufacturer, Western Digital, in California.
They were to produce an ST506 controller that could be mounted directly
on the disk drive and connected to the system bus via a 40 pin cable.
In 1985, the disk manufacturer, Imprimis, integrated this controller
into its hard disk drives. Thus, the first IDE disk drive was built and
installed in a Compaq computer system."
Alas, like other definitive references, that pinpoints the drive and the
interface, but NOT necessarily when they started to use the NAME "IDE".
Did any of the communications between Compaq, WD, Imprimis, etc. use "IDE"
as a name, either publicly or privately? Or was that created by the
marketing people long after there were already retail/wholesale products?
"Other hard disk and computer manufacturers recognized the advantage of
IDE. Not only was the increase in the cost of the disk drive
negligible, but there was a great saving on the hard disk controller.
Gradually, more and more IDE implementations were developed, and with
them, the various deviations of the industry standard."
"As a consequence, a committee of the X39.2 working group of ANSI began
to deal with the problems in October, 1988. As its first project, the
common access method (CAM) committee put forward a suggestion for the
normalization of the IDE interface. The new name for the IDE interface
was ATA. At the time of writing, (February, 1993), version 3.1 of the
proposed standard was the current version, and the process to make it an
ANSI standard was underway."
So another voice on the chicken-vs.-egg question.
"began to deal with the problem in October, 1988",
"He [Dal Allan] said that the AT Attachment project got its name on 30 Mar
89."
Alas, if WD didn't actively use the NAME "IDE" prior to 30 Mar 89, then
the issue of which name came first remains unresolved. (and probably of
little or no interest to anybody other than US!)
If, on the other hand, anybody can find an official WD use of "IDE" prior
to 30 Mar 1989, . . .
That "origin" of the name "AT Attachment" presumably followed some
informal discussions, just as the use of "IDE" probably followed some
unofficial uses. (Marketing meetings in those days used flip-charts and
overhead projector foils, rather than Powerpoint)
How long did WD deal with it before they gave it a NAME? (other than
something like "skunkworks", "Project Chess", or "Compaq contract
project")
I remain in agreement with Mueller's comments of "IDE" being a marketing
name and "ATA" being formal/"official". And certainly with the NAMES
being used mostly contemporaneously, rather than explicitly sequential.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
