Hi,

IDE to VGA inteface, that's a new one, haven't heard about that one before. I used to integrate SVGA controllers onto X-Bus, EISA and VESA-local motherboards in a past lifetime. One actually made it into PC Magazine when they reviewed the first P5 processors a very long time ago. They liked it - it was an ATI Mach-32 VESA Local Bus based design. I also helped ATI debug the chip as well.

They didn't like the internal custom air scoop and fan that the Mechanicals shoe-horned in to cool the 5V 60/66 MHz Intel P5 processor. That chip ran V E R Y H O T. That was before 3.3V changed the world and we could all progress.

I'm not going to play with this Addonics converter much more. I think you probably have the right answer. I don't have schematics of the player so I had no idea of the mapping. I could have pulled out my logic analyzer (HP16500), but without a schematic, it would have been futile.

It's possible that the other converter (JMicron Chip based), may be doing the same thing just in a less obnoxious way. Although, I can FTP a crap-load of FIDS to it before it croaks.

I'm about ready to give up on interfacing SATA drives to the EMPEG.

Thanks for the explanation.

Ross