This is probably too easy to figure out, but I'll ask anyway.

I currently have a rig that I built as follows:
AMD Athlon X2 4400+ dual core processor
Asus A8N SLI deluxe motherboard
2x 160GB SATA 7200rpm HDD in RAID 1 configuration (using a softraid controller on the mobo)
2x 7800GTX XFX video cards
Microsoft Windows x64 edition

Now, I understand that Linux has issues (or so I have read) with installing dual boot with such a hard drive configuration.

But what I would like to do is install a separate IDE drive on a different channel to the motherboard (separate from the RAID) to run SuSE 10.1 from. Can I actually do this? Will the bootloader get written to the RAID or the IDE drive that Linux will be on? I assueme it will be on the RAID as that is where the MBR currently is.

Also, can Linux make use of SLI?

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

I've never done this, but I have seen this as the workaround for such configuration issues. So I'd say yes - you can do this.

Note: you can specify where you want the bootloader to go. Your ide drive will be hda so you may get better results with hda0 or some other location.

AFAIK: the more recent linuxes are handling these things better - I've seen FC5 install successfully as dual boot in a similar HW constellation. And, of course, it is the "sharing" part that is tricky. A pure linux-box install seems to work just fine.

It would appear so. (assuming you mean nvidia SLI, for those video cards of yours) A good place to look for possible issues is: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14

If you write the bootstrap loader to the mbr of the drive that you will install, you could use the NTLDR.exe program to chainboot linux. There are plenty of howto's on the web. Google for "NT Lilo boot" or "NT grub boot" or search this site for those terms.

Your BIOS setup should let you decide which drive, ide or the raid array is used for booting.

I used to do the same thing on my desktop, until the raid controller went bad, so I just removed windows.

Thanks! You guys have been helpful. I'll pick up a spare IDE drive this weekend and give it a shot!