[CALUG] older ata's in desktops

[Walt Smith]

I recently got a slightly older desktop.
I recently got a used ata disk drive for it.
I haven't used ata before.

The bios doesn't show the ata interface.
In another box, the bios does show an ata,
and I have installed easily a linux on that other box.

I would guess that the first ata drive cannot be used
unless the box is booted from an IDE ( or other means ).
i.e. cannot boot from the unsupported ata..
I would guess that Windows supports ata without it being
in the bios.  

Is this essentially correct ?
Does the linux kernel support ata not shown in the bios ?
( how would it, except by booting on something else ?)
Is ata from linux (without bios support) 
generally pretty good or not?, if using say, an ide disk or
live CD to boot from initially?

I repeat myself solely for the attempt at clarity.

thx,
Walt......



There's a shortage of programmers for that language created this morning.