Well many years ago when we upgraded our old Compaq(Pentium 75MHz) from a 4x CD-ROM to an 8x, the drive came with an ISA to IDE converter.
Unfortunetly, I can't think of any time I've tried this with more recent drives, but I can't see it being much different...
Why would you want a converter? It wouldnt make it any faster. Id say if you want a faster hard-drive, buy a new one.
From my experience, going from PATA to SATA, i noticed the difference. My SATA is much faster, my old PATA HDD was a 7,200rpm and my SATA is also 7,200rpm. That and the cables are MUCH smaller, now i just need a SATA DVD drive.
i don't care about the speed between the two; i'm sure they're comparable. i would just like to make sure i can build a new computer with a hard drive and cd drive both with an IDE interface and be able to run that IDE-PCI card and it detect my hard drive without me having windows installed. otherwise, if i turn my computer on and the card doesn't work, i'm going to be stuck with one IDE slot and to install windows we all know a cd drive and a hard drive are necessary simultaneously.
Im very confused at what your saying. Each IDE cable should contain at least 3 connectors, 1 goes to the mobo and 2 go to the drives. Is that not enough?