I have a TX2300 Sata II controller card that I am trying to get working on Fedora Core 4 - a 2.6.x kernel, by compiling Promise's Partial Source driver.
I have limited experience going Linux driver compiles -- those that I have done ran smoothly running the manufacturer's script. The promise script gives hundreds of warnings and errors and various incompatibily warnings (it says it needs gcc 3.x, FC4 has 4.x - ought not to be a problem. It refers to the partial source driver being for 2.4 kernels. )

Is this a hopeless task? I am missing somethingly obvious like "2.4.x drivers never work on 2.6.x?", or some trick about driver compiling on FC4?

Dave

Promise does not support Linux very well. I suggest using the controller only for Windows. For Linux, I suggest SATA controllers from Highpoint. They work well even with out downloading the modules (drivers) from the manufacture. I have not ran into data corruption and DMA problems while using Highpoint controllers in Linux for four years. Silicon Image and Promise controllers do have DMA and sometimes data corruption problems.

If you still want to use the Promise controller, you can downgrade. Downgrading the kernel and gcc compiler takes a lot of work. I recommend backing up the installation before attempting.

Thank you for replying. My problem is that I have already bought the Promise card! Highpoint's closest fit was a lot more expensive (x5) although it had 6 more ports than I need.

The promise card worked fine on 2.4.x kernel - using Redhat 9. But I had to upgrade the kernel because of SMP kernel hangs running Tomcat, so downgrading isn't an option.

Yesterday I found a koutech card (for $30) that works - although it's SATA I not SATA II. (I added it to LQ's HCL).

I'd still like to get the TX2300 working on 2.6.x if anyone knows how!

SATA-II hard drives will still work with SATA-I controllers. Why you want SATA-II?

The Koutech uses Silicon Image chips so it will give you data corruption and DMA problems.