BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-11, 03:50:

There was a period as well where anything but high end motherboards seemed relatively stingy with the SATA ports, like you only got two, and you didn't need the speed yet for DVDRW or ROM so you filled up your PATA channel first.

Extra SATA channels would have meant they would need to fit another controller onto the board, which means more money, and nobody wanted that.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-11-11, 19:02:

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-11, 03:50:

There was a period as well where anything but high end motherboards seemed relatively stingy with the SATA ports, like you only got two, and you didn't need the speed yet for DVDRW or ROM so you filled up your PATA channel first.

Extra SATA channels would have meant they would need to fit another controller onto the board, which means more money, and nobody wanted that.

And not just more money, but more headaches, e.g. presumably you'd need a different F6 floppy if you're trying to install on a drive on the add-in controller versus the on-chipset controller. And there are probably going to be other weird quirks... none of which are going to be obvious, which means support inquiries, grumpy customers, etc.

I've seen some high-end boards in the late 2000s maybe that actually had three different sets of SATA ports wired to different controllers and colour-coded differently. Some had different speeds/capabilities than others too. I might be remembering wrong, but I think they had the on-chipset SATA controller, then they had a PATA/SATA controller with maybe two SATA ports and two PATA channels, then they had another, fancier PCI-E SATA controller with maybe 4 ports. Always struck me as a bit insane...

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-11, 19:39:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-11-11, 19:02:

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-11, 03:50:

There was a period as well where anything but high end motherboards seemed relatively stingy with the SATA ports, like you only got two, and you didn't need the speed yet for DVDRW or ROM so you filled up your PATA channel first.

Extra SATA channels would have meant they would need to fit another controller onto the board, which means more money, and nobody wanted that.

And not just more money, but more headaches, e.g. presumably you'd need a different F6 floppy if you're trying to install on a drive on the add-in controller versus the on-chipset controller. And there are probably going to be other weird quirks... none of which are going to be obvious, which means support inquiries, grumpy customers, etc.

I've seen some high-end boards in the late 2000s maybe that actually had three different sets of SATA ports wired to different controllers and colour-coded differently. Some had different speeds/capabilities than others too. I might be remembering wrong, but I think they had the on-chipset SATA controller, then they had a PATA/SATA controller with maybe two SATA ports and two PATA channels, then they had another, fancier PCI-E SATA controller with maybe 4 ports. Always struck me as a bit insane...

That was a thing that caused some problems youre right, I remember falling foul of that on an old MSI board I had.
I couldnt figure out why it wouldnt load to install onto a RAID.
Turned out I was trying to load the Intel ICH drivers and my drives were on a Promise SATA controller...

It was about now that a lot of custom XP builds went onto the sites all loaded up with all manner of controller drivers.
Some of those customs were really bloated and it is those that have given the custom xp cd the bad name it has today.

VivienM wrote on 2023-11-11, 19:39:

SATA ports wired to different controllers and colour-coded differently

Huh, thanks, you might have explained why the Dell 755 has those colored blue/black/white/black (with a bios that really insists on them being used in order) - in IDE emulation mode with 4 drives the colored ones would be primary, and blue/white for the 2 channels was quite typical... 😀