IDE to SATA bridge chips

[Funkstar]

Techy question on these for a change.

What transfer mode do they usually support? Do they take advantage of UDMA modeas as opposed to limiting the drive to PIO?

Clunk raised the idea of using CF to SATA adapters in this thread:
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...highlight=sata

So i've been looking into Sandisk Extreme IV cards in RAID-0 as a boot drive to my HTPC as an experiment.

Going by a review on Rob Galbraith (http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/con...id=7-7896-8475) the cars are UDMA Mode 4 when speaking to the right controller. As CF cards can be connected directly to IDE ports, could these cards be used in Mode 4 with SATA bridges and regular IDE ports?

4GB cards are down to about £60 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hi-Speed-CF-.../dp/B000I00DCW and http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=140606). So i guess if they didn't work out for booting they would at least still be bloody quick on my 350D. In fact the cards would probably be quicker than the camera

[Thorburn]

Check out Miles Industrial Electronics.
They do flash devices that can plug directly onto IDE, SATA or USB headers.

A friend who does amateur rocketery uses them as he builds small embedded systems with a webcam in them to capture flights and obviously a mechanical HDD wouldn't like that too much.

[Funkstar]

I'm pretty sure they won't perform as well as Extreme IV cards.

[directhex]

yes, they support DMA transfers

the earliest generations of SATA drive were literally IDE drives with a convertor chip soldered directly onto the control board. Marvell make them, and they should work fine

[Funkstar]

great, thanks directhex. Thats pretty much what i thought, but just wanted to make sure

Just wating for a reply from linitx to see if i was right about their adapters.