Nice. The music is quite epic. 😉

Quite interesting, thanks!

I salvaged a PCI SATA card the other day even though I don’t have any SATA drives but as you say in your video IDE is starting to get rare.
This is a much neater option though, will definitely keep it mind for the future!

I hear that, hence why I packratted so many older IDE drives and stored them away.

Nice to see another option however 😀

Could you try this converter with a SATA DVD drive? I'm just curious if it works..

I have that exact card except the PCB is black, I bought it on Amazon. It doesn't work with optical drives, at least not in the direction PATA drive -> SATA controller. The build quality is terrible, it looks like the plugs were soldered by a five year old with a waffle iron. But it works fine for hard drives in both directions.

Pet peeve:

SATA drives are IDE drives too. IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics and that hasn't changed just because the plug is different.

Some comments.

1)
Have you determined if the IDE and SATA controllers on your motherboard offer the same performance? For example, if you had the same hard drive from WD that came in both SATA and IDE flavours, would the performance on both motherboard ports be equivalent? Can you hook your fastest IDE drive up to your motherboard's IDE port and see what benchmarks you get? What if any drive connected to the IDE port is naturally slower than the SATA port? What I am trying to get at is, how do we know the loss of performance is due to the converter?

2)
I noticed that you have two of these converter cards. A nice addition would be to use your SATA hard drive and connect it to both converter cards such that the output is still SATA. Hook it back up to the SATA port on the motherboard and run the benchmark again. How much performance loss is there now?

Sune Salminen wrote:

I have that exact card except the PCB is black, I bought it on Amazon. It doesn't work with optical drives, at least not in the direction PATA drive -> SATA controller. The build quality is terrible, it looks like the plugs were soldered by a five year old with a waffle iron. But it works fine for hard drives in both directions.

Pet peeve:

SATA drives are IDE drives too. IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics and that hasn't changed just because the plug is different.

You are correct 😀 Sata uses the same protocol as IDE. As for sas it uses the same as scsi but sas controllers and backplaines allow the use of sata drives.

feipoa wrote:

Some comments.

1. Good point. I actually don't have an IDE HDD. Only one DVD-RW for testing. But it's a fair comment.

I will follow up with another IDE controller (a PCI IDE controller card) and let's see if the results are any different. Will also keep my eye out for IDE HDDs because that's a very good point you made.

2. Sounds interesting. Might give this a go.

Follow up...

Today I wanted to test something else and found that the IDE controller wasn't working anymore 😒

I believe I connected the SATA HDD to the wrong plug on the adapter but I'm not 100% sure on this.

Anyway I had this PCI IDE controller card and so I just used this instead.

Now I looked at all my SATA <> IDE adapters and I have two different models! One has a larger chip on it so I tested how the two of them compared on the PCI IDE controller:

Both adapters from the front:

Both adapters from the rear:

Chip on the other adapter (much larger):

HDD hooked up to the small chip adapter:

HDD hooked up to the large chip adapter:

Results for the small chip adapter:

Results for the large chip adapter:

Also hooking up a SATA DVD RW works just fine:

Conclusion:

Well clearly there are performance differences between these converters. So keep your eyes out for new revisions / chips and if you buy one let us know how you go 😀

Also if anyone could bench some IDE drives for comparison that would be terrific. Basically what would a typical 20, 40 or 80GB IDE drive be like.

If you run the test again do you get the same results?

feipoa wrote:

If you run the test again do you get the same results?

YES!

The fluctuations are a bit odd but I got them the second time as well.

The good thing is these adapters work and that the performance is decent enough. With SSD prices coming down it will be very feasible soon to use a 30GB or 60GB SSD for Windows 98SE projects.

I would love to test these on my vintage mainboards but I don't have anything that is small enough to be used. I do have a 60GGB SSD but that is in use in my media PC.

You want to try them on a PIO-4 IDE controller or a PCI/ATA card?

feipoa wrote:

You want to try them on a PIO-4 IDE controller or a PCI/ATA card?

Well the whole aim is that these could be used with vintage machines. So whatever IDE controllers they have onboard.

For example my Super Socket 7 machine has an UDMA33 controller. Another board I have, with a VIA chipset, that supports the P3 1.4GHz has a a UDMA66 controller.

So what would be interesting if we could benchmark typical IDE drives on such systems (Socket 7, Slot 1, S375) and see what we are getting.

This is an invitation for others to contribute as I don't have IDE drives at the moment and no SATA stuff that is small enough to work with these BIOSes.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

This is an invitation for others to contribute as I don't have IDE drives at the moment and no SATA stuff that is small enough to work with these BIOSes.

Sounds fun, but unfortunately all my free time is consumed with the Ultimate 686 Benchmark Comparison.

Thanks for trying the DVD drive. It's good to know we can use SATA drives rather than paying way too much for a PATA model.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

IDE SATA Converter Review!
I hope you find this review useful. If you also have a converter, but using a different chip, could you please run the same benchmark (it's a free benchmark) and let me know what you are getting.
Enjoy 😀

The name of the HD Benchmark program you are using would be greatly appreciated ! Don't you think ?

iBenny

🤣

Good point 😀

Actually I'm not sure anymore. I think it was HD tach.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

🤣
Actually I'm not sure anymore. I think it was HD tach.

Well, if you use it, just click the "about" sub-menu and you'll have all the info about the program (I'm talking about the one pictured in your post up above). And if there is no "about" sub-menu, then check the file name or the property of the said file (well, you should know how to find it; stupid of me to tell you how). HD Tach is a shareware that you have to buy; it's not free.

iBenny

That PC doesn't exist anymore, sorry 🙁