What is ata2 ?

[Rob]

Joel wrote:
>>>>I'm running FreeBSD on a range of PCs, from
>>>>Pentium-1 (60 MHz) to Pentium-4 (2.60GHz), though
>>>>none but one has a 'ata2' line in the dmesg
output:
>>>>
>>>>ata0: channel #0 on atapci0
>>>>ata1: channel #1 on atapci0
>>>>...
>>>>ata2: <Generic ESDI/IDE/ATA controller> at port
>>>>      0x36e-0x36f,0x168-0x16f irq 10 on isa0
>>>>ad0: 6149MB <QUANTUM FIREBALL EX6.4A/A0A.0D00>
>>>>     [13328/15/63] at ata0-master UDMA33
>>>>ad1: 4892MB <QUANTUM FIREBALL EL5.1A/A08.1100>
>>>>     [10602/15/63] at ata0-slave UDMA33
>>>>acd0: CDROM <GCR-8521B/1.02> at ata1-master PIO4
>>>>
>>>>What is so special about this particular PC, that
>>>>it has an ata2, unlike all other PCs I have?
>>>>
>>>>Can I add more than 4 disks (2 masters + 2 slaves)
>>>>to this PC? Or is this ata2 for something else?
>>>
>>>From here, with the limited information you've
>>>provided, I'm guessing you can, if you have the
>>>cables and the spare power connectors.
>>
>>I'm quite keen on trying to understand this.
> 
> yeah, yeah
> 
> It's also been suggested that this may be on a
> multifunction card, which would typically be a
> multimedia card.

OK, I will soon shut the system down and inspect
the inside of the box.

For now, another, possibly silly, question:
If this is indeed a multifunctional multimedia card,
then does that mean I can connect another harddisk
to this card, and it will be recognized as a
harddisk on ata2 ?
And connect my speakers at the speaker connectors
and play music with the very same card?

And, eh, this is a rather old PC.
Dmesg says:
  CPU: Pentium II/Pentium II Xeon/Celeron
       (239.83-MHz 686-class CPU)

Regards,
Rob.

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