Where are the PCI Express IDE controllers??

All the Core 2 Duo motherboards I've been looking at provide only 1 IDE connector. And apparently the only purpose for which that lonely legacy connector is intended is to allow us to hook up our optical drives. The industry seems to have decided that it's time for us to all throw away our PATA hard drives and move on to SATA.

Well, frankly, I am not ready yet to throw away my PATA drives. I've got three 250GB and one 160GB drives that I spent non-trivial money on and which are all still completely usable.

My first thought was that if/when I move to one of these "new age" motheboards, I would have to pick up a PCI Express IDE controller card. But strangely enough, I don't see any PCI Express IDE controllers for sale.

Am I just not looking in the right place or is no one making IDE controllers for PCI Express? After all, I thought the PCI bus was almost as dead as PATA is supposed to be. What's up with this?

-john, the PATA dinosaur

Yes, but it's not just an issue of bandwidth but also of available slots. The number of PCI slots provided seems to be dropping with each new iteration of motherboards. At the same time the number of 1x PCIe slots grows. Why doesn't anyone make an IDE controller I can put in a 1x PCIe slot?

There is also the fact that many of the existing PCI cards are PCI v2.2 compliant only. They will not work in the newer motherboards because the new mobos implement 3v PCI v2.3. So if you do buy an old-school PCI IDE controller, you have to be careful to make sure that it will work in a PCI v2.3 slot.

Prompted by your link I took a look at newegg and noticed that there are PCI Express cards for USB 2.0. If there is anything I would think would not be needed with today's motherboards it is even more frickin' USB 2.0 ports. But there they are.

But can you easily add more IDE ports ... something that is actually missing from the current crop of motherboards? Nope.

It astounds me that a lot of us with PATA drives are finding ourselves painted into a corner. And meanwhile none of the interest sites like Tom's or AnandTech even mention it's happening let alone question it or suggest work-arounds.

-john

amen to that, imagine the space on a board when the floppy connector, ide connector, PCI slots all disappear. The possibilites.. i bet i can fit 4 sata connectors in the space of every ide connector. Also, for back panels, its really time to do away with Serial and Parallel Ports. USB and IEE1394 would be nice. E-SATA would be better.

I also wouldnt mind (even recommend) if every batch comes with a legacy board. 1 with the standard 2 IDE, 1 floppy and PCI. It can cost a tad bit more but it should make those who have a old investment happy.

PS. Most HD Audio solutions built into the motherboards are already on PCI-E. So are the eithernet connectors.

I checked out a few OEMs and you are right. Nobody makes a PCI-E->IDE card. SIIG make one for parallel ports, and still makes ISA cards! This makes no sense because you just know there is a market for this.

http://www.addonics.com/products/h [...] depxrj.asp

In hindsight, I may have been full of the proverbial "it" when I said this.

I based it on noticing that in this AnandTech article, Intel P965: Mid-Range Performance Sector Roundup, all the boards were spec'd in the features tables as having PCI v2.3 (3.3 volt cards only) slots. But going back and looking at the pictures of the boards, the PCI slots on all the boards are actually keyed for PCI v2.2 (5 volt cards).

So it looks like I was wrong about PCI v2.3 slots displacing v2.2 slots on the newer motherboards. Never mind.

-john

Even I have looked for a PCIe IDE controller and have not been able to find one.
I am lucky to have a PROMISE Ultra ATA/133 TX2 controller 66MHz PCI. It is a Non-RAID
controller you can get one at Newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6816102007

I hope this helps and I know this is not a PCIe controller. I wish there was one out there too.