I'm getting a new AM2 motherboard and only have one IDE connection on my mainboard, But want to connect 3 devices 1 DVD drive and 2 hard drives which are both IDE drives, My spec's say it can support four hard drives,
What's the procedure?

Why not buy an AM2 board with two ide ports such as the Abit kn9? I have this board myself and it works fine with Linux. This is the better option IMO. You may need to buy a USB/parallel printer cable since the Abit kn9 has no serial or parallel ports.
There are other twin port AM2 boards but I have no personal experience of them. Perhaps other posters can help.
The alternative is to buy an add-on controller card such as the Highpoint Rocket 133SB which has its own built-in BIOS. See the Highpoint site for why this is better for Linux than the non-BIOS version.

Thanks Beachboy, It's on it's way already and I'll try to get around it. Thanks for the tips.
fvs

When a mobo supplies only one IDE channel it normally has plenty Sata connectors too. Some of them do 6 Sata plus external connection via a e-Sata port too.

Hi saikee, How well do the new AM motherboards work with Linux distros? I have Debian etch on a
754 board with a Sempron 64 1.6 and upgrading to an MSI AM with an Athalon 64, will I have any problems?

PS How well do usb external Hard drives work with linux?

To be honest I haven't got a clue as I am still working with a single core AMD64 Athlon 3200 on a 939 Asrock board.

There have been numerous reports on getting Linux off the ground first on AMD dual core and then more recently the Intel dual core. I guess being poor, and not able to afford dual core CPU, can be a blessing at the moment. My Asrock 939 NF4G board must be the cheapest around with an unknown (to me) video onboard but I don't think I have a problem with a distro not able to install in it yet.

I have been put off by the new mobo offering more Sata and less IDE connections. I am greedy and enjoy having the 63 partitions in a Pata and do not want to come down to the 15-partition limit of the Sata. IDE/Pata disks may be a bit slower but they are well established and recognised by every operating system without a driver.

saikee,
I could not agree more with your comment about the ide/pata drives. Why go looking for Linux dependency problems? The twin ide port Abit kn9 is just perfect for Linux (as is your Asrock one).