8400 SATA ports?

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Does the Dimension 8400 have just two SATA ports? Are they SATA-I or
SATA-II? Is there room in the box for more than two 3.5" hard drives?
A friend wants to upgrade, and is wondering how far he can go...

Thanks!

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"Edward J. Neth" <ejn63@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:5llme.33$4u.23@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com...
> There are four SATA connectors on the board, and by default, room for 2
> 3.5" internal drives.
>
> Going beyond that means either buying an adapter for the 5.25" bay and/or
> sacrificing the floppy drive.
>
> There are only two SATA power connectors, so if you add more SATA drives
> that come without MOLEX connectors, you'll need power converters in
> addition to the drives and data cables.
>
>


As usual, Ed's on the money.


While Dell doesn't specify the SATA spec on their Intel 925 board:

http://support.dell.com/support/ed [...] #wp1052308

The Intel website suggests that both versions of the 925 are SATA 1:

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/express_flyer.htm


Therefore I'd speculate the 8400 has SATA1.


Stew

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"Edward J. Neth" <ejn63@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:rZDme.401$rL7.42@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com...
> Intel hasn't yet released a SATA2 chipset -- all current ones are SATA1.
>
>
>


Ed,

Judging by the data transfer rates, I think the 945 and 955 chipsets are
SATA 2 (those rates drastically increased from the 915 and 925).

Unless I misunderstand, this claims a leap from 150MB/s to 3GB/s.


Dimension 8400
925 chipset: http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/925xe/index.htm

Dimension 9100
955 chipset: http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/955x/index.htm


Seeing those numbers, I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that the 8400/925 has
the "old" SATA standard, and the 9100/955 has SATA2.


Stew