[TriLUG] IDE Hard disk limitations BIOS and Linux

[Rick DeNatale]

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 08:51:28 -0500, Aaron S. Joyner <aaron at joyner.ws> wrote:
> A bit of a primer on IDE RAID and how it interacts with the BIOS would
> probably by ideal.  Let me start by saying that (as you mentioned later
> in your email) the card you have *optionally* supports RAID.  If you
> don't configure any RAID devices, it simply acts as a normal IDE
> controller.  I think the problem you're seeing with it not booting is
> one of two things -- either your motherboard's BIOS is really confused
> by the card, or more likely, it's confused by the presence of what it
> sees as two bootable add-in cards (both the IDE card and your SCSI
> card).  The simple test would be removing the SCSI card and seeing if
> the BIOS will boot to the IDE, but if you've already got a working
> solution it may not be worth the hassle.

Well actually it wouldn't even be possible. The SCSI interface isn't
on a card but is integrated on the MOBO. That's why I thought that the
boot sequence was strange.  Here's the description from the IBM
technical information manual which I found on the IBM PC support
website:

  Intellistation M Pro (Type 6889) computers have an integrated
Adaptec AIC-7895 Dual Channel Ultra Wide SCSI PCI controller that
provides an interface through which the computer can communicate with
SCSI compatible devices....

  The Adaptec AIC-7895 Dual Channel Ultra Wide SCSI PCOI controller
also supports the Adaptec RAIDPort connection with an extension to
expansion slot 2...The RAID extension is available with the addition
of an optional ARO-1130 PCI RAIDPort adapter to expansion slot 2.

The problem might well be that when I was trying to boot with the IDE
card installed, the disk hadn't even been partitioned let alone having
anything bootable on it.  I've now got it attached to the MOBO IDE
port and as I posted earlier, Linux fdisk sees it as a 160MB drive. So
far all I've done is put a single 10MB partition at the beginning of
the disk. I might just try to install linux on this drive and then go
back and try the card and see if I can get any further.  But somehow I
think using this (or probably any other) IDE card on this system is a
lost cause, since I found the statement that "PCI or ISA IDE expansion
adapters are not supported" in the Tech Info manual.