On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 16:56 -0700, Kirk Bocek wrote:
Scott Silva wrote:
With PATA the device ID is based on location. Hdb is the primary slave (slave on first port). There doesn't have to be a hda.
I thought the point of master/slave in the IDE world was that the master was acting as the controller for the slave. If that's the case, how can you have a slave without a master?
It's not truly any relationship like that. It's just (in the old days) a device ID selected on the cable by jumpers on the drive. The "control" is nothing more than the IDE controller selecting either "0" or "1" device ID for commands and data. The drive with the matching ID responds while the other ignores.
In todays world, cable select might provide the ID assignment.
I'm not sure how "master" and "slave" came to be used in this scenario, unless it had to do with BIOS boot processes back in the old days.
<snip select stuff>