On Tue, 27 Aug 2013, Holger Granholm wrote to Mark Lewis:

[trim]
ml>IDE, ATA, ATAPI are all pretty much synonymous... IDE came about 
ml>when the HD controller card was removed from the slot and placed on 
ml>the HD... the card used in the slots was then just an interface 
ml>card... since then, there is no interface card in a slot as they are 
ml>now built directly onto the motherboards and the cables connected
ml>to them there...

 HG> Yes I recall. The AT system used MFM coding 

or RLL... it depended on the interface card and the drive(s)... i used to
take MFM drives and lowlevel them on RLL interface cards to convert them
and gain 50% more space... i never had any problems doing this, either...

 HG> and we still have the SCSI format for use by people that want the 
 HG> utmost reliability.

i don't know what lowlevel format SCSI used... my understanding is that
SCSI is simple the connection and instruction set used to talk to the
drive(s)...

 HG> And I also remember all those different floppy disk coding formats
 HG> that were different for each manufacturer of CP/M machines.

yep... there were many... everyone was trying to lock folks into their
solution... kind of like the stupid mess today with the so-called
smartphones and having an app for everything... you'd think they would have
learned better back then or that they would learn from history and not
repeat it in another form...

 HG> Have a nise fall season,

i'm trying... have already gotten out the thicker clothing for those cool days :)

)\/(ark