ASPI was developed by Adaptec in the early 1990s. It was originally designed to support SCSI drives. Support for ATAPI interface (such as IDE) was later added.
Microsoft licensed the interface for useduse with [[Windows 9x|Windows 9x series]]. At the same time Microsoft developed [[SCSI Pass Through Interface]] (SPTI), an in-house substitute that worked on the NT platform. Microsoft did not include ASPI in Windows 2000/XP, in favor of its own SPTI. Users may still download ASPI from Adaptec. A number of CD/DVD applications also continue to offer their own implementations of ASPI layer.
