ATAPI Interface?

[marvin888]

looking to get this slim line dvd/cd-r/rw drive. Is ATAPI interface the same as a standard cdrom drive? Is it a good price? Going to put it into my Shuttle. Standard size ones don't anymore after I installed a 300W U1 PS.

 

[ameoba]

The drive uses a normal IDE bus but with a different connector; you'll need to pick up an adaptor but other than that, it should work fine.

 

[Snugglebear]

Just a niggle here - ATAPI (AT Attachment with Packet Interface) is just a bus protocol, and it's standard for all devices sporting the label, be they optical slimline drives, laptop HDDs, or 3.5" SATA HDDs. Over the years it's been upgraded occasionally, version 7 is still in the works, and ATAPI v6 is the current standard. The ATAPI CDROM drive I got as a gift for my 386 over a decade ago uses an older standard, but still works because of backwards compatibility.

 

[Ice Czar]

just another link to add to Snugglebear's



ATA\ATAPI History

ATAPI? What is that?
ATAPI is the real name of the CD-ROM (EIDE CD-ROM) and tape (ATAPI tape or EIDE tape) interface. This interface was originally developed by a group of CD-ROM companies with lots of help from Western Digial and Oak Technology.

ATAPI did not start as an ANSI standard. It was a specification published by the Small Form Factor (SFF) committee. SFF is an ad hoc disk drive industry committtee that usually concerns itself with things like connectors, the location of mounting holes and other physical configuration stuff. The original SFF document for ATAPI was called SFF-8020 (now called INF-8020).

NOTE: SFF-8020 (INF-8020) is very OBSOLETE and should not be used! The correct documents to use for ATAPI are ATA/ATAPI-4 (or higher) and SCSI MMC or MMC-2.

ATAPI introduced a new command execution protocol for use on the ATA interface so that these new CD-ROM and tape drives could, in theory, be on the same ATA cable with an ATA hard disk drive. Basically, the ATAPI Packet command, command code A0H, is used to send what looks like a SCSI CDB across the ATA interface. The actual data transfer (from/to the device media) is done using the ATA PIO or DMA protocols.

If you want to know what "SCSI like" commands are accepted by ATAPI devices then you should probably read the appropriate SCSI-3 document(s) for back ground information. Then get the appropriate SFF document for the ATAPI device type, for example, SFF-8070 describes the ATAPI super floppy "SCSI like" command set. There are many of these ATAPI "command set" documents floating around the industry today and even keeping a list of them is difficult. Some I know of are: QIC-157 (ATAPI tape), SFF-8070 (ATAPI Removable Rewritable Media), SFF-8080 (ATAPI CD-R/E) and SFF-8090 (Commands for DVD). Locating some of these documents can be difficult.

as far as I know all Optical Drives (CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM)
Zip Drives and most Tape Drives*, are either ATAPI or real SCSI
(* I think they make Fibre Channel tape drives, but they would still use a SCSI interface?)

 

[marvin888]

thanks for all the infromation, but is the connector on the back a standard 40/80 pin ata connector? or is it like a laptop cd-rom/hdd? would I need to get an adapter for it if I bought this drive? can you even tell? I shearched the Lite On web site and couldn't find anything on this drive. if you go here the one on top states USB 2.0 connection but this one just states ATAPI interface.

 

[Zuht]

A slimline drive will almost certianly have the laptop-style interface, so look for an adapter.