Hi,

An ATA Controller Card is a plug-in PCI card which allows for more drives (Hard Drives, CD-RW, etc) to be added to the system. The Mother Board allows for four drives and a controller card would add space for four additional if so desired--of course, this is limited by space inside the tower.

See Promise for a full description of their ATA 133 Card.

Steve

Hello Steve,

Thanks for the reply.  Correct me if my understanding is wrong. 

On my 4100 desktop that has a burner, floppy drive, cd dvd drive a controller card is necessary.

Or in order to add a drive over the 4 drives allowed either internal or external you need a controller card.

A controller card takes up one of the spare pci slots or uses its own pci slot.

                   Thanks.........HV

Hi,

The 4100 system that you describe is using three out of the four available MB channels for ATA drives since the Floppy has it's own channel/connector.

This would leave you an addition channel to add another IDE device and with the limited space inside a 4100, it would be difficult to squeeze in anything else. 

As for external additions, any IDE external add-on would have to go through the USB port, which, in my opinion, isn't the best situation due to speed limitations with the USB I standard.  There are other options for external add-ons but they require a PCI card for the connection.

You are correct in that to have more than four IDE internal drives you would need the Controller Card and yes, the Card does use one of the five avalible PCI slots.

I have a Controller Card since I needed more expansion slots, I have 3 HDDs and more importantly, my Dell MB's ATA channels were only ATA 33 and to speed up my system adding a ATA 100/133 card was the only way. The new 4100 systems are ATA 100 complient so the speed up wouldn't be necessary.

I did notice at the Promise site that they are shipping their new ATA 150 cards which utalize the new serial connetors that are the next generation standard for HDDs.

Steve