Promise ATA 66 Proble
 

Hi,

I was trying to install Mandrake 8.1 on my Dell Dimension XPS700 and the installation would freeze. I have a Promise Controller ATA 66 card and my hard disk is connected to it. During installation it recognizes my hard disk and shows the interrupt request at ide0 (which is 10), it also shows an interrupt request for ide1 (though nothing else is connected to the my controller card except the hard disk) and then it freezes.

The interrupt request for this ide1 is 15 and thats the last line it prints out during the installation before it goes blank! I checked that interrupt under Windows (I am trying a dual boot) and it is assigned to Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller.

I can do the installation without the ATA card, but I dont want to do this specially when I loose stuff that I open up :)

Here is a brief hardware spec for my system

hdc - Samsung DVD ROM
hdd - Sony CD-Writer
hde - Quantum Fireball 10.2
System Chipset - Intel 440BX

I would really appreciate any help in this regard. Thank you
Shiva

I had the exact same problem with Quantum drives on a Promise controller. Immediately after probing the drive the system would lock up. It happened only with the Fireball CX and KX series. For the KX series I was able to install using the onboard IDE and then rebuilding the kernel to include Promise support. It was ugly.

Isn't ATA support enabled automatically?
 

Isn't ATA support turned on automatically during installation? b/c I saw DMA enabled during the installation before it froze. Also, could you please let me know how to compile the kernel to enable in ATA support (if thats the case). I know for sure that it would work if I just connect to the onboard primary ide, b/c I did it before with Mandrake 7.2. Thanks for your help!

Shiva

You need to enable Promise PDC202XX in the kernel or as a module.

It's not just ATA support but rather it's support for the promise controllers.

No Guarantees that this will solve your problems. I've got an old 15GB Fireball KX that used to give me grief and I'll be playing with it again this weekend so I'll post whatever spells I had to cast upon it to get it working.

I've tried for months to get a Promise ATA100 card working and it's given me nothing but problems. I think I had more luck with Maxtor drives and no luck with Seagate connected to the card. After giving it one last chance it corrupted my entire /usr partition and since I have completely given up. Now I am connected to the MB 33 interface. No problems anymore...

I should also add that I never got the card working reliably in Win2k either. (seperate machine)

I haven't had any troubles at all using Redhat 7.1 with my ATA100 Promise card. It seems to like it jsut fine. I have two hdds attached to it. A 15gb Maxtor and an 80gb WD. It installed the correct components on startup.

Hi guys!

Thanks for all your input. mcleodnine, I did see something like PDC20262 printed out while it was probing my ide's, I am not sure if those are the modules that you meant or not. As for RH 7.1, I gave it a try too but to no avail. It froze at the same place. I was wondering if there are any command line arguments that I can pass in while installing to see if I can have some luck. Any ideas? Thanks again for your interest!

Shiva

Just wanted to let you guys know that I have given up on my stupid card. Connected my hard disk to my MB ide and everything works fine. I just installed Mandrake 8.1 and this is so cool. I cannot believe I was missing out on this for a stupid Promise card. Thanks for all your answers though.