ide channels..

[mill]

standard dual channel with primary and seconday are the PATA(parallel)

Pata parallel ata Sata Serial ata

Ok stop me if im wrong, your saying if a person has 2 standard hard drives on 2 ide cables its pata. And if they have 2 serial hard drives its called sata

[Chewy]

the number of drives has nothing to do with it, older interface, with 40 pins,
ide became Pata(used to be just ata), parrallel refers to transfer technology.
Sata uses serial interface, small connector.

http://www.answers.com/topic/serial-ata

[mill]

Thanks for the link Chewy,
This is whats throwing me off

"nvidia nforce4 parallel ata controller" this was listed in the device mgr befor i updated the chipsetdrivers and now its not.
Is it because its not in use, since i dont have any hard disks on ide cables??

[Chewy]

maybe nvidia finally got with the ballgame and made their drivers compliant?

They've taken quite a thrashing online for the last 2 years, deservably so.

[mill]

So nothings broke, or i didnt screw anything up by installing those new drivers? I updated again yesterday to Nvidia nforce4 ver 6.86 i installed a ide driver, it said somthing when it was installing that i am going to need a floopy with nvraid- 32v 105 tool or somthing like that when i or if i reinstall windows. whats that all about??

[mill]

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/drivers.php?categories=1&model=262

[Chewy]

you use the floppy for when you reload windows so your windows cd can see
the serial hard drive

[mill]

Its keeps getting more complicated

[Chewy]

to me it's a piece of cake, all this video stuff is what's complicated