Hi,

I have a kernel that I downloaded from kernel.org and built myself with all the AHCI options I could find statically built into the kernel as I don't want to use an initrd.

The kernel boots up fine when I select AHCI mode in BIOS. However, when I select IDE, LILO gives a 99 99 99 error. I'm not sure what's wrong but is it due to a lack of IDE drivers in the kernel, even though the drive is a SATA drive?

I would like the kernel to boot in both AHCI or IDE mode if possible.

I would recommend to start with the standard configuration for your distro and then adding the AHCI options. I never had any problems on my Slackware boxes when switching the mode, just ran fine anyways.

Post the output of 'lspci -k'.

Why exactly do you need the legacy IDE mode ? AHCI is the best mode to use. For IDE mode you need controller-specific drivers that may be (and often are) buggy.

@TobiSGD this isn't any distro, it's a custom built kernel.

@H_TeXMeX_H, if I can't even get it to boot in IDE mode, how do I post the output of lspci? Booting up in AHCI mode would only should the AHCI drivers right? Unless, I boot up to a LiveCD that will have the drivers required.

Anyway, the reason is because I'd like the drive to boot up in as many PC configurations as possible, and hence I'd like to handle the case where the user has a system that its BIOS SATA settings set to IDE mode.

In a terminal type this in and press Enter, then you copy and paste it here:

Yes, booting in AHCI mode will show the AHCI drivers. However, I can also tell what controller you have and guess the right driver to use. You can also use a live CD, boot in IDE mode, see the driver and built that into the kernel.

It's an intel P55 chipset and I'm using the integrated SATA controller.

Is there a way to build in drivers such that it works across most modern intel/AMD systems? i.e. the intel ICH/PCH family, whatever AMD uses, and maybe the Marvell/JMicron drivers as well? I remember seeing IDE options in the kernel config, however some have a caveat that they are deprecated and are incompatible with the SATA drivers.

Edit: it's probably a LILO issue instead. I built in all relevant PATA drivers into the kernel, but LILO still gives me continuous "99" error messages. Must be some BIOS setting that it's incompatible with...any ideas? I tried changing from linear to lba32, still no go.

Some BIOSes have the option to re-arrange the disks when in IDE mode. May it be possible that LILO can't find its data because of that?

OK it's actually a hardware problem. I tried it on another drive and it works just fine...I've had other problems with that particular hardware...so I'm not gonna sweat it.

Thanks!