So would the mobo likely have 4 channels? As in you can hook up four cables to support the 8 drives?

That's usually how it works, yes. Looking at http://www.soyousa.com/images/800x600_products_mb/kt333_dragon_ultra(silver).jpg it seems that, on that particular board, the normal IDE channels have blue and white connectors, and the RAID channels yellow connectors.

Peter