Hard drive pricing is on the increase, with IBM/Hitachi already raising
prices significantly and with other vendors ready to follow suit.
While current stock remains, we have our 80GB FireCube on exclusive
mail list special for $339 and our 120GB FireCube out for just $399.
http://www.zytech.com.au/firewire/drives/firecube/firecube.html
As this is a mail list exclusive offer you'll need to type WAMUG
special in the special comments field at checkout and we'll bill you
the prices above. This offer will expire Saturday 19 July or as current
stock runs out.
We have FireWIre 800 PCI cards in stock and if you order one of these
with any other Zytech item, we'll send your entire order freight free -
offer expires 19/7/03 .... same drill "WAMUG Special".
http://www.zytech.com.au/firewire/pci/3port/index.html
You may have heard a lot about Serial ATA recently so we've decided to
pass on a backgrounder courtesy of one of our main Taiwanese suppliers.
It is quite a good summary and the grammar is almost there as well -
Why Serial ATA
Serial ATA (SATA), an evolutionary high-performance interface for
storage devices to replace the Parallel ATA, is used to connect ATA and
ATAPI devices, including CDs, DVDs, tapes devices, high capacity
removeable devices, zip drives, and CD-RWs.
Compare with parallel ATA interface, Serial ATA addresses some
shortcomings and provides a scalable platform to support several
generations of future storage devices.
Serial ATA is a drop-in solution that is compatible with today's
software, which runs on the new architecture without modification. It
provides for systems which are easier to design, with cables that are
simple to route and install, smaller cable connectors, improve silicon
design, and lower voltages which alleviate current design requirements
in Parallel ATA.
Lower Voltage.
Parallel ATA requires integrated circuits to tolerate input signals as
high as 5 volts. Serial ATA reduces the signaling voltages to
approximately 250 millivolts (¼ volt).
Pin Efficiency.
The parallel ATA interface has 26 signal pins going into the interface
chip. Serial ATA uses only 4 signal pins, improving the pin efficiency
and accommodating a highly integrated chip implementation.
Improved Cable and Connector Plant.
The parallel ATA cable and connector plant is a bulky cable made up of
unwieldy 80 conductor ribbon cables and 40 pin header connectors.
Serial ATA uses a much smaller serial cable similar in appearance to
modern telephone cables. Eliminating the cable nest improves the
system's airflow and cooling, and offers greater freedom in chassis
design.
Master-Slave Interaction.
With today's parallel ATA implementation, pairs of devices share a
common cable in a master-slave relationship. This interaction between
devices results in the available bandwidth being shared between the
devices. Additionally, since the devices on the cable interact, they
must be jointly qualified, resulting in the substantial expansion of
the system integrators' qualification matrix in order to comprehend all
possible combinations of devices.
Serial ATA is a point-to-point interface where each device is directly
connected to the host via a dedicated link. Each device, therefore, has
the entire interface bandwidth dedicated to it, and there is no
interaction between devices. This means software can be streamlined,
eliminating the overhead associated with coordinating accesses between
the master and slave device sharing the same cable.
Serial ATA is compatible at the register level with parallel ATA. This
means Serial ATA requires no changes to existing software and operating
systems in order to function, and it provides backward compatibility
with existing operating environments. It has already been demonstrated
to run with Microsoft Windows* 98, Microsoft Windows 2000, and Linux
operating systems without the need for any special software drivers.
Keith Palmer
Zytech Marketing Pty Ltd
7 The Strand Bunbury 6230
Phone: 08-9791 5556 Fax: 08-9791 5900
http://www.zytech.com.au
All pricing includes GST
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