Here is my current setup:

AMD Athlon64 3200+ (s939 "Winchester" core)
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
1GB OCZ Enhanced Latency PC3700 Memory
single 36GB WD Raptor
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Sony CPD-E540/B 21"" monitor

I'm planning on buying a 2nd Raptor and raiding it with my other one for better general disk responsiveness in Windows (I only use it for HDTV output support when watching DVD's and playing games and VBA for school), and I want to get an extra 80GB 7200rpm SATA drive for the 64-bit version of Fedora Core 2. Does anyone know if I'll have a problem with the built-in nForce3 Ultra SATA controller during the initial Fedora Core 2 install? Furthermore, has anyone experienced any issues with the nForce3 Ultra or 250GB SATA controller and kernel 2.6.x? I know nVIDIA puts out is own Linux driver software for the chipsets, but I'm worried about the installer recognizing my SATA drives. Any info would be greatly appreciated since this will weigh in heavily on my purchasing decision. Thanks.

Is there no one out there who has tried an nForce3 250GB or Ultra motherboard with any distro with kernel 2.6.x?

Per the LQ Rules, please do not bump your own thread until at least 24 hours have elapsed without a reply. Because the LQ membership is global, people in other time zones may not have seen this post yet, and thus it may take some time before a response is received.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/rules.php

mdahc - sorry to hear you are having trouble, but LQ is entirely run by volunteers, helping out in their spare time. Sometimes it takes a while for responses to be received. Good luck with it -- J.W.

Sorry about bumping my post within 24 hours. I did read the rules when I originally joined LQ, but I thought bump meant bump your post up to the top of the forum by reposting your original post all over again. I won't repeat that mistake. My apologies.

mdahc - thanks for your note. The 24 hour rule exists for 2 reasons - it gives people in other time zones a chance to respond, and also, if people bumped their own posts all the time, most of the threads would probably end up consisting mostly of bumps posted by the original poster. For any other LQ'ers or future readers who may encounter the same technical question, threads that are full of clutter like that would be worthless and unusable.

Anyway, in terms of addressing your question, I unfortunately do not have any suggestions. Have you done a Search here of other threads on SATA? It's a reasonably frequent question, and I know there are a decent number of existing posts on the topic already. Perhaps one may be useful to you.

Good luck with it either way. (Nice rig BTW!) -- J.W.

Hey there, I've got the same mb, the installer can't see the SATA hard drive. I've tried Fedora Core 3 Test 3, and Ubuntu 4.10. I worked around it temporarily by installing onto a SCSI drive. Once FC3 was running, (on the SCSI drive), it could see the SATA just fine. Funny that the installer kernel doesn't see the drive, but the installed kernel does?

I'll post back here if I find a solution.

Update: Searching through Google, there are reports that the SATA controller works great with Gentoo. See here; http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.../10/19/1654258

Time to try it out,

J.

Yes i had a similar problem with onboard raid. HPT370 chipset from adaptec i think. When the chip is enabled in the bios the Suse 9 installer can never finish installing. It stays stuck at the point where it is probing the chip. Only upon disabling it I can install Suse 9. however it seems that Suse 9 on paper supports and have modules for the chip.

I guess what you need is an installer with support compiled into the kernel that the installer runs of Slackware has many different kernels to choose from to boot install maybe you can have a look for and RAID and SATA one I know there is one but you should read the documementation first any way how you finding your board im gonna buy an MSI K8N NEO2 thats why im reading this thread

As long as you use a 2.6.9 or later kernel, you should be fine. Fedora Core 3 Final works like a charm. The Ubuntu Live CD works fine too, just not their installer. Silliness. I don't have digital sound working yet, just haven't had time to really dig into it. Shouldn't be that hard though. The NEO2 Platinum is a great mb, although if I was looking today, I might want to wait for the nForce4 boards due out some time soon with PCI-X and SLI support...

Jeff

HI

I'm running an AMD64 FX-53 on a MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum with 2X Maxtor 250GB Sata Hard Drives - I've just installed the 64-Bit Fedora Core 3 without any problems at all.

Hope this helps

Does anyone know if this board work will work with Mandrake 10.1?