On Wednesday 16 May 2001 17:11, ISU COMPU DUDE wrote: > I have a MSI 694D motherboard with onboard VIA 686a chipset ide controller > and Promise FastTrak 100 w/ lite bios. I also have a Promise FastTrak 66 > with full bios. > > I am trying to use Mandrake 8.0 > > I have 5 hd's and a cdrom all set to master. > 20gig onboard VIA ide channel 1 > cdrom onboard VIA ide channel.2 > 40gig onboard fastrack channel 1 > 40gig onboard fastrack channel 2 > 30gig on pci fastrack channel 1 > 30gig on pci fastrack channel 2 > > If I have all drives hooked up and boot the cd the cd hangs affter it > detects hda and hdc the pdc driver in the kernel only sees 1 channel on the > 2 promise cards. > > If I unplug the cables from the drives on the promise cards I can boot the > cd and install. > > after installing I can plug the cables back in and see 1 40gig and 1 30gig > drive but I get random lockups. (do I need to recompile the kernel???) > > I have tried changing the way the drives are in the promise bios (1 drive > stripe, 2 drive stripe, 2 drive mirror, etc) with no different results. > > My guess is that the kernel module needs some parameter passed to it to see > the second channel on the promise controllers, but I don't know what to do. > > I have searched and searched on the net for answers and put my problem into > mandrake expert but still no answers. > > If someone could help me I would appreciate it much! I don't want to > install windows again just to use my drives. Massive data corruption cross-channel on ide occurs with win2K and many versions of linux with the VIA 686x chipset. First, before anything else, update your BIOS. VIA has been working with motherboard manufacturers to correct this _hardware_ bug by setting up IDE a bit differently thus eliminating the logic race condition. Second, there is a good possibility that the install kernel and the boot kernel see your drives at different locations. I expect a fix will be available early next week for that. Third, it may be that the Promise controllers actually do share an interrupt in which case there is little or nothing to be gained by having every device on a primary channel, and no performance hit would ensue from simplifying your hardware to the on-board plus ONE Promise controller. Civileme
