Ultra DMA/66

Twice the speed?

The BE6 is one of the few BX motherboards to offer onboard Ultra DMA/66 support. Abit uses the High Point HPT366 Ultra DMA 66 IDE controller. The motherboard has 2 Ultra DMA 33/66 channels that can support up to 4 devices in addition to the 4 devices already supported by the 2 regular Ultra DMA 33 channels. You can have up to 8 IDE devices, but the IRQ configuration may be frightening.

The motherboard has 4 IDE ports. The two regular Ultra DMA/33 sockets are black, and the Ultra DMA/66 sockets are white. If you have an Ultra ATA-66 drive, you have to use the white sockets to take advantage of the Ultra DMA/66 mode. You can still connect most Ultra DMA/66 drives to the regular ATA-33 sockets, but the drives will only run in ATA-33 mode. You can also connect Ultra DMA/33 drives to the white IDE sockets because the High Point controller supports both Ultra DMA 33 and 66.

New 80-pin cable

Standard IDE devices use a 40-pin cable, but Ultra DMA/66 devices need a new 80-pin cable. Tim already covered the reason behind the new 80-pin IDE cable in the BP6 review. We'll just paraphrase the main points.

UDAM/66 and 33 cables

Signal interference, "crosstalk," occurs when high power electric signals from one line affect signals on other lines. This is especially true in cables where wires run next to each other, like hard drive IDE cables. The 80 pin Ultra ATA-66 cable adds 40 additional ground lines to reduce crosstalk.

To prevent signal degradation, the 80-pin cable has a maximum length of 18 inches. Signal degradation occurs when an electric signal traveling from one point to another loses enough of its power, or charge, that by the time it reaches its destination, it can be misread. The signal degradation issue is dealt with by specifying the maximum length of the cable insuring that the signal remains solid in transit.