More than 2 IDE channels?

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

The local Best-Buy guy told me that if I put a card in my machine (which already has 2 IDE channels) that has 2 IDE channels, I will have four, and I can even boot from the two IDE busses.

Is this possible? It sounds like a big load of u-kno-what to me, but if it is possible, *how* is it possible?

[scott_R]

Well, I've never been one to praise those (ahem) knowledgable people at best buy (nothing like minimum wage tech support), but this one is likely to be true. After all, all the card has to do is let the bios know it's there, and it can be anything, including a drive.

As for being bootable, it's probably true if it pretends to be a bootable network card or something else bootable. My best advice would be to read the box, then hope it will work on your system, with linux. I can see soemthing like this work fine, but only through it's windows-only drivers... :(

Either way, it's hardware, so they shouldn't give you too rough a time if it doesn't work, especially considering they recommended it. On the other hand, why do you need it? I'm just curious, because I can't imagine many people needing more than four drives for normal, or even small business use, or needing those extra drives to be bootable.

[bdg1983]

That's how the Promise ATA66/100 pci card controllers work. It will be possible to have 8 ide devices hooked up. Four on the motherboard and four on the Promise controller.