Robert Leaman
From:
Murphy, North Carolina, USA
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Posted 4 Dec 2012 6:13 pm |
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For those who have PATA (parallel IDE or EIDE) devices, there are several adaptors on the market that claim to make this conversion possible. To date, I found only one adaptor that operates properly with every device that I could test, i.e., hard drives, optical drives (CD/DVD drives), and even a 1998 Mitsubishi LS-120 SuperDrive. The LS-120 is a floppy drive that can operates on a PATA IDE bus with standard 3.5-inch disks and is able to store 120MB on a specially formatted 3.5-inch floppy. I bought a LS-120 in 1999 but never used it. I did a recent computer rebuild with a new motherboard (Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H) that has no floppy controller nor does it have an EIDE controller. Everything is SATA (6 devices). I use floppies to send control programs to customers who have industrial interfaces that require floppy disks for updates. My LS-120 drive does everything that a standard floppy drive can do plus the high density floppies although my customers have no need for high density floppies. The only caveat is that the PATA drive must be configured as MASTER (rear panel jumpers). The adaptor is 2.5-inches wide and 1-inch high and fits on the rear of a PATA drive so that it needs neither a slot nor any setup.
Be cautious if you purchase a SATA-to-PATA adaptor. SIIG sells an adaptor with the part number SC-SR0112-S1 (red circuit board) which operates properly. This is the part that I use. Also, this part number is compliant with operating systems from Win 2000, XP (32/64 bit), Server 2003 (32/64 bit), Windows 7 (32/64 bit), and Vista (32/64 bit).
SIIG also sells an adaptor with a green cicuit board which does not operate as SIIG claims. |
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