I know that, but, from my tests, the hard drive connected to the same IDE channel with a CD-ROM is very, very slow (even if the CD-ROM is not used).

Maybe my tests are too old (about one year ago).

Vlad

>Nothing preventing you from attaching a CD-ROM and a drive to the same channel; I'd tend to put the smaller drive and the CD-ROM together, especially in situations where accessing both at the same time is an unlikely occurance. Current CD-ROMs operate in Mode 3 or 4 for the most part, so that isn't the limiting factor; the lack of a disconnect/reconnect like SCSI has is the major drawback; with SCSI, a slow activity (like a long seek on the CD-ROM) allows the device to relinquish the SCSI bus and reacquire it when the operation is completed, but with IDE, the device has to hold the channel fore the entire duration of the operation. Yet another reason to go SCSI...
>
>Ed