Alternative terms for master and slave

[Brad Eckert]

It seems the terms *master* and *slave* are being phased out of the tech lexicon with help from Google. I know this is like herding cats, but I have a proposal for a terminology change.

Just replace *master* and *slave* with *Alice* and *Bob* respectively. *Bob* attaches to *Alice* and then *Alice* tells *Bob* what to do, so it's easy to remember. Isn't that more fun than *master* and *slave*?

In SPI terminology, *mosi* and *miso* become *aobi* and *aibo*. If you have multiple Bobs on the bus, it gets better. Alice has a meeting with the Bobs.

[Reinhardt Behm]

Two boobs attached to Alice.

[Niklas Holsti]

My favourite alternative to master - slave is

boss - body

as in "everyBODY does what the BOSS tells them".

Boss-body has the nice property that both words have the same number of
letters, so variable names etc. can be nicely aligned in the code :-)

[David Brown]

The software world is full of terms that can offend people if people
choose to be offended. Just look at processes on *nix systems - you get
daemons and zombies, you stop a process by killing it, parent processes
can't die until all their children are dead (or else the children turn
into zombies), and so on. I remember someone on my CSP course at
university complaining about the terms "angelic choice" and "demonic
choice".

And of course in electronics we have male connectors and female connectors.

Perhaps black and white photography should be renamed to "shades of grey" ?


No, "master" and "slave" are not being phased out except by a few
companies where some PR twats can't understand that their thoughtless
eagerness to be "politically correct" actually offends people more than
leaving things as they are with convenient and practical names.

[Don Y]

On 12/15/2020 2:32 AM, Brad Eckert wrote:
> Just replace *master* and *slave* with *Alice* and *Bob* respectively. *Bob*
> attaches to *Alice* and then *Alice* tells *Bob* what to do, so it's easy to
> remember. Isn't that more fun than *master* and *slave*?

Doesn't that, also, imply a sexist interpretation (Alice being the driver of
the relationship?)

Perhaps "Pat" and "Chris"?

Then we can have Pat-Chris Flip Flops! (and whatever innuendo attaches,
there!)

[Grant Edwards]

On 2020-12-15, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:

> And of course in electronics we have male connectors and female connectors.

I remember about 35 years ago, when I said something about a male or
female connector within earshot of my girlfriend. She asked why
they're called male and female and how do you decide which is which?

I picked up two connectors, showed them to her and then plugged them
together.

She was horrified.

--
Grant

[David Brown]

I can understand these things being a surprise, or possibly even
offensive, to people unfamiliar with the particular field. But when the
terms are everyday technical terms, people using them do not associate
them with the same things. When you decide if the coax connector on a
board is to be male or female, you are thinking about the physical
connector - not human body parts. (You might think about human body
parts next time you do have a connector - but that is only because we
have been discussing them in that way.)

You have a similar effect in human language with swearing. People never
mean these /literally/, or think about the real meaning of the words
when they swear. (It can be fun when first seeing swear words in
different languages, if you translate them literally because you don't
know they are common curses.)

For people who work with SPI buses, talking about an "SPI master" and an
"SPI slave" makes them think of microcontrollers and eeproms, not a
scene from "Gone with the Wind" or "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom".

And if someone thinks it is a problem that the words "master" and
"slave" (or "male" and "female") are used in these contexts, then they
should stay out of that kind of conversation - they don't understand it
anyway.

[upsid...@downunder.com]

On Tue, 15 Dec 2020 11:59:36 +0100, David Brown
<david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:

>On 15/12/2020 10:32, Brad Eckert wrote:
>> It seems the terms *master* and *slave* are being phased out of the
>> tech lexicon with help from Google. I know this is like herding cats,
>> but I have a proposal for a terminology change.
>>
>> Just replace *master* and *slave* with *Alice* and *Bob*
>> respectively. *Bob* attaches to *Alice* and then *Alice* tells *Bob*
>> what to do, so it's easy to remember. Isn't that more fun than
>> *master* and *slave*?
>>
>> In SPI terminology, *mosi* and *miso* become *aobi* and *aibo*. If
>> you have multiple Bobs on the bus, it gets better. Alice has a
>> meeting with the Bobs.
>>
>
>The software world is full of terms that can offend people if people
>choose to be offended. Just look at processes on *nix systems - you get
>daemons and zombies, you stop a process by killing it, parent processes
>can't die until all their children are dead (or else the children turn
>into zombies), and so on. I remember someone on my CSP course at
>university complaining about the terms "angelic choice" and "demonic
>choice".

Some might also be offended by running Ethernet controller in
promiscuous mode, accepting all packets.

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 5:59:42 AM UTC-5, David Brown wrote:
> >
> The software world is full of terms that can offend people if people
> choose to be offended.

Sorry, I stopped listening to you after you showed extreme ignorance.

Yeah, people can be offended by things we think of as innocent. I recall a female assembler being offended by the use of the terms male and female for connectors. I tried to reason with her for a bit, then I asked, "OK, what should we call them?" That completely changed the tone of the conversation and we worked something out.

I don't recall the terms we came up with, but the conversation made her happy and we never had that conversation again. Win-win.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[Rick C]

Here is another example. What do you think of using the term "carnal knowledge" to refer to knowledge of the inner workings of a function?

This was a real discussion in a language forum. People were tossing the term around and I didn't know what they meant by it. I looked it up and found it's actually a term from mostly legal usage and fairly archaic. I have a relatively large vocabulary and the group is international, so I figured I would not be the only person needing to look it up. Since the only definition of carnal knowledge is to have intercourse with someone as in a trial, "Did you have carnal knowledge of the victim?"

That just sounded strange to me. We give new meanings to words often, typically a closely related term that is given a particular shade of meaning in a technical context. I could not figure how anyone would think a euphemism for the sex act would be an appropriate term to requisition for use in discussing technical issues.

I was accused of being a prude and seemingly in line with international opinions of people from the US. Many of the supporters of this new term indicated it was perfectly clear to them, so obviously must be clear to everyone. It was one of the oddest conversations I've had on the Internet.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
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[Don Y]

On 12/15/2020 9:07 AM, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:

>> The software world is full of terms that can offend people if people
>> choose to be offended. Just look at processes on *nix systems - you get
>> daemons and zombies, you stop a process by killing it, parent processes
>> can't die until all their children are dead (or else the children turn
>> into zombies), and so on. I remember someone on my CSP course at
>> university complaining about the terms "angelic choice" and "demonic
>> choice".
>
> Some might also be offended by running Ethernet controller in
> promiscuous mode, accepting all packets.

In the trade, the opposite of "Generic" is "Ethical". Interesting
choice of word!

[David Brown]

On 15/12/2020 17:34, Rick C wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 5:59:42 AM UTC-5, David Brown
> wrote:
>>>
>> The software world is full of terms that can offend people if
>> people choose to be offended.
>
> Sorry, I stopped listening to you after you showed extreme ignorance.
>

Fortunately, I choose not to be offended by these terms :-)

>
> Yeah, people can be offended by things we think of as innocent. I
> recall a female assembler being offended by the use of the terms male
> and female for connectors. I tried to reason with her for a bit,
> then I asked, "OK, what should we call them?" That completely
> changed the tone of the conversation and we worked something out.
>

That's it. Master/slave, and other such "non-PC" terms do a perfectly
good job. They are a lot better than Alice and Bob - those are terms
from cryptography, rather than SPI buses.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2020-12-15, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:

> That's it. Master/slave, and other such "non-PC" terms do a perfectly
> good job. They are a lot better than Alice and Bob - those are terms
> from cryptography, rather than SPI buses.

I assumed that the whole Alice/Bob thing was a joke...

--
Grant

[Niklas Holsti]

On 2020-12-15 18:34, Rick C wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 5:59:42 AM UTC-5, David Brown
> wrote:
>>>
>> The software world is full of terms that can offend people if
>> people choose to be offended.
>
> Sorry, I stopped listening to you after you showed extreme
> ignorance.
>
> Yeah, people can be offended by things we think of as innocent. I
> recall a female assembler being offended by the use of the terms male
> and female for connectors. I tried to reason with her for a bit,
> then I asked, "OK, what should we call them?" That completely
> changed the tone of the conversation and we worked something out.
>
> I don't recall the terms we came up with, but the conversation made
> her happy and we never had that conversation again. Win-win.

"Pin" and "socket" should be clear and offend no-one.

[Tom Gardner]

Male and female and hermaphroditic connectors.

Male jack plugs, female jack sockets.

Trigger words are everywhere.

[Hans-Bernhard Bröker]

Am 15.12.2020 um 14:30 schrieb Don Y:
> Then we can have Pat-Chris Flip Flops!  (and whatever innuendo attaches,
> there!)

Of course we can't. Flip-flops are banned from any sane workplace
because of safety regulations. Shoes have to be firmly attached to feet
and have to offer at least a modicum of protection against falling tools.

[George Neuner]

For some in the US, the word "boss" has the same negative connotations
as does "master".

YMMV,
George

[Rick C]

Yes, boss.

There's a Chinese restaurant I eat at when I charge the car. The lady at the counter calls me "boss". I guess that's a polite formality. I should tell her to call me Rick.

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[David Brown]

I assume so too (though these names /are/ used in cryptography), but
they are fine examples of what you get when you try to pick terms that
have no connotations of one thing controlling other things. And
unfortunately it is no joke that some people and companies are trying to
change terms like master/slave in technical usage.

[Michael Kellett]

Perhaps people like using sex based terms for things because everyone
can understand the metaphor and a lot of us think about it a lot.

In the 60s it looked as if we might all get a bit more relaxed about
stuff - but now we seem to be going backwards.

For what it's worth I use Controller and Device rather than Master and
Slave - it won't work - in the UK several terms for people with brain
function problems have been tried - but they typically take no more than
a year or two of common use to become derogatory.

I wonder if people who sign have the same problem ......

MK

[Theo]

David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
> I assume so too (though these names /are/ used in cryptography), but
> they are fine examples of what you get when you try to pick terms that
> have no connotations of one thing controlling other things. And
> unfortunately it is no joke that some people and companies are trying to
> change terms like master/slave in technical usage.

IMHO words are just words. We could call the things A and B, Alice and Bob,
aadvark and buzzard, it doesn't really matter.

However, it may be the existing choice of words is upsetting to some people.
If that's the case, perhaps they should suggest some new words. If we find
some words that are less upsetting all round, that's a win.

Some people say 'well I'm not upset by them so why should we change?'.
And of course if you don't see the problem, why would you be motivated to do
so? So why not leave it to those who want to propose some better
ones, and let's adopt those?

What it doesn't need is to blow it up into a culture war demonising about
'those people undermining XYZ values' and seek to defend the pre-existing
state of affairs just because it was pre-existing, rather than any intrinsic
merits of the situation.

Theo

[Don Y]

On 12/17/2020 10:04 AM, Theo wrote:
> David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
>> I assume so too (though these names /are/ used in cryptography), but
>> they are fine examples of what you get when you try to pick terms that
>> have no connotations of one thing controlling other things. And
>> unfortunately it is no joke that some people and companies are trying to
>> change terms like master/slave in technical usage.
>
> IMHO words are just words. We could call the things A and B, Alice and Bob,
> aadvark and buzzard, it doesn't really matter.

Of course it does! Words are meant to convey ideas/concepts. We choose
words that map neatly to the concepts that we're trying to discuss.

Should all variable names be of the form "V<integer>"? How much harder
would that make sorting out the intent of a particular coded algorithm?

We could call the horizontal axis "gertrude" and vertical axis "banana";
I wonder how long it would take for folks to get THOSE straight in their minds?
And, what /mnemonic aids/ would they develop to facilitate that? (i.e.,
how would they MAP those names to REAL concepts?)

> However, it may be the existing choice of words is upsetting to some people.
> If that's the case, perhaps they should suggest some new words. If we find
> some words that are less upsetting all round, that's a win.

The time for that is before the concepts are codified and the terms
(to be REPLACED) widely circulated. You don't, now, decide that we should
call all these electronic computing devices "thinkatrons" (TmReg).
Imagine the hassle trying to reinterpret previous literature in light of this
ARBITRARILY newer name!

> Some people say 'well I'm not upset by them so why should we change?'.
> And of course if you don't see the problem, why would you be motivated to do
> so? So why not leave it to those who want to propose some better
> ones, and let's adopt those?

Again, why? Should we decide black has bad connotations for use as a ground
conductor (esp given that it is the HOT conductor in AC mains)? Maybe we
should just rename that color as "fred", going forward!

> What it doesn't need is to blow it up into a culture war demonising about
> 'those people undermining XYZ values' and seek to defend the pre-existing
> state of affairs just because it was pre-existing, rather than any intrinsic
> merits of the situation.

Times (and attitudes) change. Do we keep rewriting our history to comply
with the current set of pleasantries? Or, do we adjust things GOING FORWARD
to reflect current sensibilities and learn to live with that which has come
before as a sign of our evolution?

[David Brown]

That's all fine.

But what we have with terms such as master/slave bus nodes is that none
(to my knowledge) of the people using them are upset by them, nor are
people who might reasonably be bothered by such words (people who have
been slaves, or had some connection to people who have been slaves).
The people getting their knickers in a twist about these terms are
over-active extremist "social justice warriors" who are not content with
finding things that bother people, but are telling people what should
bother them. (I have nothing against social justice or political
correctness - I'm ready to fight against all sorts of bigotry or
injustice. But I am against extremism in any guise - too much of a good
thing is very rarely still a good thing.)

If I were to hear someone say "You know theses boards we are designing?
It bothers me that some nodes are referred to as master nodes and some
as slave nodes", I'd look for new terms. If I were to hear "You know
these wireless speakers you make that come in master/slave pairs? Those
names bother me, because I have often been told that we black people
should still be slaves", I'd look for new terms.

If I hear that people are /actually/ bothered by the use of these terms
in my work or my field, then I'll try to change them. But until that
time, I see no benefit in changed well-known and well-understood terms
to things without meaning that will cause confusion, error and
unnecessary work.

[Rick C]

On Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 2:30:19 AM UTC-5, Michael Kellett wrote:
> On 15/12/2020 16:55, Rick C wrote:
> > Here is another example. What do you think of using the term "carnal knowledge" to refer to knowledge of the inner workings of a function?
> >
> > This was a real discussion in a language forum. People were tossing the term around and I didn't know what they meant by it. I looked it up and found it's actually a term from mostly legal usage and fairly archaic. I have a relatively large vocabulary and the group is international, so I figured I would not be the only person needing to look it up. Since the only definition of carnal knowledge is to have intercourse with someone as in a trial, "Did you have carnal knowledge of the victim?"
> >
> > That just sounded strange to me. We give new meanings to words often, typically a closely related term that is given a particular shade of meaning in a technical context. I could not figure how anyone would think a euphemism for the sex act would be an appropriate term to requisition for use in discussing technical issues.
> >
> > I was accused of being a prude and seemingly in line with international opinions of people from the US. Many of the supporters of this new term indicated it was perfectly clear to them, so obviously must be clear to everyone. It was one of the oddest conversations I've had on the Internet.
> >
> Perhaps people like using sex based terms for things because everyone
> can understand the metaphor and a lot of us think about it a lot.

That was my objection to the use of the term "carnal knowledge". If someone not knowing the language looked it up and found it is a euphemism for having sex, what would they think it was being used for, having sex with your computer? At least the term "promiscuous" has a dictionary meaning that is similar to the technical usage.

> In the 60s it looked as if we might all get a bit more relaxed about
> stuff - but now we seem to be going backwards.

Not sure why you consider the issue to be a matter of going backwards. Being sensitive to people's feelings is not a bad thing.

> For what it's worth I use Controller and Device rather than Master and
> Slave - it won't work - in the UK several terms for people with brain
> function problems have been tried - but they typically take no more than
> a year or two of common use to become derogatory.

I think USB uses Host and Device which are good terms, clear enough and without connotations.

> I wonder if people who sign have the same problem ......

Check out ASL for bullshit. Very graphic.

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

[Robert Roland]

On Tue, 15 Dec 2020 10:59:40 -0700, Don Y
<blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote:
>In the trade, the opposite of "Generic" is "Ethical". Interesting
>choice of word!

Are you sure?

"Ethical" and "ethnical" may look similar, but have very different
meaning.
--
RoRo

[Don Y]

"Ethical" drugs are aka "prescription" drugs (in the US), for
hysterical raisins. Their production, sale and dispensing are
regulated. (other "medications" have less stringent restrictions)

Drugs that have gone "off patent" are produced by others
(beyond the "innovators") as "generic" drugs. These are the same
medications (possibly minor "inert" differences in formulations
having to do with the production process) but, usually, at a reduced
sell price (the "generic" manufacturer doesn't have to bear the cost
of drug development and testing).

The lay public calls the former "brand name" but, old-timers in the
industry still resort to the use of "ethical" to differentiate
(though ALL are technically "ethical" in the "prescription" sense
of the word)

[I first heard this at a trade conference, many years ago. I
turned to my boss and commented, "Wow! What a sleight against
the generic industry! (ethical suggests unethical)". This, of
course, isn't the STATED intent... though I suspect the ethical
producers aren't real keen on the generic houses!]

<https://pharmachemicalscoatings.blogspot.com/2007/12/challenges-to-ethical-and-generic-drug.html>

<https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM196110122651511>

[Brett]

Brad Eckert <hwf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems the terms *master* and *slave* are being phased out of the tech
> lexicon with help from Google. I know this is like herding cats, but I
> have a proposal for a terminology change.
>
> Just replace *master* and *slave* with *Alice* and *Bob* respectively.
> *Bob* attaches to *Alice* and then *Alice* tells *Bob* what to do, so
> it's easy to remember. Isn't that more fun than *master* and *slave*?
>
> In SPI terminology, *mosi* and *miso* become *aobi* and *aibo*. If you
> have multiple Bobs on the bus, it gets better. Alice has a meeting with the Bobs.
>

Master - Apprentice
Works where the master can be replaced on failure, which is true with many
modern distributed software systems.

Just google synonyms for these words recursively.

[Kent Dickey]

In article <rra4up$okg$1...@dont-email.me>,

David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
>On 15/12/2020 10:32, Brad Eckert wrote:
>> It seems the terms *master* and *slave* are being phased out of the
>> tech lexicon with help from Google. I know this is like herding cats,
>> but I have a proposal for a terminology change.
>>
>> Just replace *master* and *slave* with *Alice* and *Bob*
>> respectively. *Bob* attaches to *Alice* and then *Alice* tells *Bob*
>> what to do, so it's easy to remember. Isn't that more fun than
>> *master* and *slave*?
>>
>> In SPI terminology, *mosi* and *miso* become *aobi* and *aibo*. If
>> you have multiple Bobs on the bus, it gets better. Alice has a
>> meeting with the Bobs.
>>
>
>The software world is full of terms that can offend people if people
>choose to be offended. Just look at processes on *nix systems - you get
>daemons and zombies, you stop a process by killing it, parent processes
>can't die until all their children are dead (or else the children turn
>into zombies), and so on. I remember someone on my CSP course at
>university complaining about the terms "angelic choice" and "demonic
>choice".

IDE drives are configured as masters and slaves. All end users had to
deal with setting up drives as "masters" or "slaves". It's a problem for
tech support. I don't doubt racist people did racist things with these
terms.

It's not so much that it only affects the small number of people designing
and building machines, it's that the terminology often gets out into the
rest of the world where it can be unnecessarily problematic. It's a
sign of maturity that the industry sees no reason to go out of its way
to be offensive and childish to end users.

In my software, I have a Monarch which tells Serfs what to do. It's very
useful since no one else uses those terms, so I always know what it's
referring to.

I wouldn't spend time redefining old standards, but for new standards, just
pick different words. PCI master/slave became PCIe
initiator/requester/transmitter and completer/receiver. What's the problem
with doing this? PCIe is nearly 20 years old now--did anyone even realize
this was being done? PCIe still refers to the PCI concepts using Master
and Slave--they didn't redefine anything, they just stopped using it for
anything PCIe-only. And SATA got rid of master/slave, too. And so on...

Basically, industry has already been doing this for more than two decades.

And the Alice and Bob stuff is like throwing a tantrum.

Kent

[Hans-Bernhard Bröker]

Am 19.12.2020 um 03:03 schrieb Brett:

> Master - Apprentice

Doesn't work. "Apprentice" is not just any member of the master's work
force; it's a career step towards becoming a master in one's own right.
That doesn't fit a SPI or I2C device at all. The correct term from that
field would be "hand."

And that's before we consider that due to its relation to the past of
the outgoing POTUS, the word "Apprentice" is just too close to being
non-PC to bet a concerted world-wide data-sheet audit-and-rewrite on.

The core problem, though, is that however large the bubble of available
synonyms is, excessive application of PC rules will eventually drain it
completely. Eventually you'll be unable to talk about anything, because
any word actually meaning anything close to what you're trying to say
will have been found offensive by someone, somewhere, at some point in
time. The idea of PC has a risk of being abused as a DDOS attack
against the system of "language".

> Works where the master can be replaced on failure, which is true with many
> modern distributed software systems.

In which case it was never truly a master-slave system in the first place.

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 12/19/2020 23:41, Kent Dickey wrote:
> ...
>... And SATA got rid of master/slave, too. And so on...
>

SATA does just a single device per link so no "master/slave" to
be talked about (and the ATA standards talk of device 0 and 1,
no master/slave there either IIRC since > 20 years).

However you can connect two ATA/SATA bridges to an ATA port
which does device 0 and 1.... and device 1 (the "slave") will not
always work just fine, depends on which version of the bridge you
combine for device 1 (slave) with which for device 0 (master)....
That for the only truly working bridge on the market from Marvell.

:D :D

So much talk about that politically (in?) correct nonsense.
Context is enough offend or not offend anyone, the choice of words
is actually irrelevant. Those who want to offend will find ways to do it
using any sort of words and those who want to play offended victims
won't run out of "offensive" words either. Words exist and do have
meaning, banning a certain word is outright stupid. It is the messages
people convey which can be offensive, not the words.

Dimiter

======================================================
Dimiter Popoff, TGI http://www.tgi-sci.com
======================================================
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/

[Grant Edwards]

On 2020-12-20, Dimiter_Popoff <d...@tgi-sci.com> wrote:

> SATA does just a single device per link so no "master/slave" to
> be talked about

Odd. All my SATA cables have _two_ ends, and there's a device at each
end. I was under the distinct impression that at one end is the master
and at the other end there's a slave.

There are are tons of other point-point protocols that use the
master/slave nomenclature, even if SATA doesn't.

--
Grant

[Dimiter_Popoff]

Hah, you may call them that of course, some people may even be
calling them that.

But for people familiar with ATA and subsequently SATA and in the
context above "master" and "slave" refer to device 0 and device 1
on the ATA cable, you probably remember your parallel ATA (aka IDE)
cables having 3 connectors: one for the host, one for device 0
(which some called "master") and one for device 1 (which some
called "slave"). Actually I don't know where that master/slave
came from, perhaps from the times ATA was called IDE which was before
I used any ATA drives in our products (used SCSI back then, until
they stopped at 810MB or so for 2.5" drives).

[Hans-Bernhard Bröker]

Am 20.12.2020 um 22:23 schrieb Dimiter_Popoff:

> But for people familiar with ATA and subsequently SATA and in the
> context above "master" and "slave" refer to device 0 and device 1
> on the ATA cable,

Not really. Parallel ATA learnd this ("cable select") as an option long
after the master/slave roles had been assigned.

The primary choice was made by jumpers on the devices, with three
options: master, slave, or cable-select. Only if both devices were
jumpered CS would their position on the cable have any significance.

The master/slave terminology was attached because device 1 was unable to
work on its own. I.e. a single device would always have to be device 0.

[Dimiter_Popoff]

Not so. Clearly you have never designed in ATA drives.

The "cable select" signal is just a pin connected to the host and to
one of the two devices, thus enabling them to know which of the two is
device 0 and which is device 1 (lookup d1153r18, it is explained well
enough there).
The jumpers on the devices are to override the cable select connection
and are unnecessary on correctly designed hosts/devices.

And of course you can have a single device on an ATA cable which
is device 1, although it is rarely done and typically unnecessary.

[Hans-Bernhard Bröker]

Am 21.12.2020 um 16:29 schrieb Dimiter_Popoff:

> Not so. Clearly you have never designed in ATA drives.

The level of your arrogance never disappoints.

[Dimiter_Popoff]

Sorry, did not mean to be arrogant. I can see it can be interpreted
like this though, I must have been thinking on all the history I have
had with ATA drives, CPLD interfaces and drivers I have been doing for
them. Not very interesting or complex to do but quite bulky.
Sorry again if I offended you.

Dimiter