We tested the Fireball Plus KA drive with a new Abit Hot Rod UDMA/66 PCI controller card, these have just come onto the market and can be purchased for approximately $40 - $60 through several mail order outlets.

The Hot Rod comes equipped with two UDMA/66 channels that can support up to four UDMA/66 compatible peripherals. This is in addition to the two channels of UDMA/33 support that most 440BX mainboards come standard with, meaning that for the cost of just one PCI slot you've now got the potential for support of up to 8 storage devices on one mainboard.

For those who are curious, the Hot Rod uses the same HighPoint Technologies HPT366 controller chip that comes embedded on the new Abit BE6 UDMA/66 capable 440BX mainboard.

Here are the details for the test rig we utilized:

MSI MS-6163 R2.0 Mainboard(Slot-1 - Intel 440BX)
EMS 128MB PC-133 HSDRAM
Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra 32MB AGP 2D/3D Accelerator
ABIT Hot Rod UDMA 66 PCI Controller Card
Diamond Monster Sound MX300 3D PCI Sound Card
Kenwood 52X Multi-Beam IDE CD-ROM
Win98SE

Test Conditions and Specifications: All tests were run a total of four times with the results averaged to determine final score.