Problem on installing F-7 on an old P-III box

satimis · 06-19-2007, 10:42 AM

Hi folks,

F-7 i386

I'm prepared to install F-7 on a P-III box. After mounting the DVD writer on the box it was discovered that the IDE slot can only connect 40-pin flat ribbon cable. DVD writer needs 80-pin flat ribbon cable. I was forced to connect the DVD writer with a 40-pin flat ribbon cable. The F-7 DVD can boot the box but the packages can't be found asking for installing driver. I have no idea what driver it needs.

Please advise. TIA.

The P-III box is connected to 3M broadband. Is there an alternative solution.

B.R.
satimis

Junior Hacker · 06-19-2007, 09:23 PM

Actually, a 80 wire cable plugs into a 40 pin connector to have parallel data transfer. I've never seen an 80 pin connector. I have a shopping bag full of ribbon cables as I do allot of computer repair/modifications, none of which have 80 pin connectors. My high end Dell has a DVD with a 80 wire cable plugged into a 40 pin connector.

Dummy-in-Linux · 06-19-2007, 10:40 PM

I found that some "older" DVD drives have problems with bootable DVD's. I have as first DVD my "older" Creative PC-DVD 16x DVD-rom drive and the second drive is a LG GSA-H10L DVD-Rewriter. On first the Fedora DVD did not wanted to boot, after I try some other bootable DVD's Windows Vista, OpenSuse 10.2 I found non did work so it was not the Fedora DVD-rom. After I changed, in the BIOS setup, the LG DVD-writer as boot device everything went smooth.

I also change several cables, power supplies etc... Because who expect a perfect working DVD-rom drive as incompatible with bootable DVD's

satimis · 06-23-2007, 09:28 AM

Hi folks,

Tks for your advice.

I'm now replying this topic on the old P-III box.

Finally I have F-7 installed.

Hardware Connection :
HD - Primary IDE master (IDE-1)
CDRom - Secondary IDE master (IDE-2)
CDWriter - Secondary IDE slave (IDE-2)

Remark:
An additional 13G ATA100 HD connected on Controller slot (IDE-3) as master. BIOS detects it at booting. But F-7 can't detect it.

Abit BE6 motherboard
http://www.thetechzone.com/reviews/m...abit_be6/index
(The mobo looks exactly as the photo)

RAM - 256M
CPU - Pentinum III (Coppermine)

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

Code:

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 8
model name      : Pentium III (Coppermine)
stepping        : 1
cpu MHz         : 515.471
cache size      : 256 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse up
bogomips        : 1031.51
clflush size    : 32

# fdisk -l

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14        4865    38973690   8e  Linux LVM

F-7 can't detect the 13G ATA100 HD connected on Controller slot (IDE-3).

# cat /etc/fstab

Code:

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf

Code:

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.21-1.3194.fc7)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img

My problem is "F7 can't detect the HD on the Controller slot (IDE-3/4)". I can't reconnect the HD to either of them

The reason for reconnecting the HD on the Controller (IDE-3/4) is to gain better performance (faster). It is a ATA133 HD. Even though the Controller only supports ATA66 there will be better performance gained. I have been playing around on the BIOS without result.

I think the only solution is to find the driver for Linux, OR to run OpenBSD instead. I have another old P-II box with the HD connected to an ABIT ATA-66 controller card. OpenBSD detected the HD at time of installation.

B.R.
satimis

Junior Hacker · 06-23-2007, 04:12 PM

Just a shot it the dark here, but it is possible all you need to do is add a package or add support in the kernel for the extra IDE channels. Back in the day, these mother boards were mostly used in a server environment where extra storage was needed. By installing a desktop setup with Fedora, it is likely this setup would not have support for the extra two channels.