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Old 02-06-2004, 07:50 PM   #1
Clansman
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promise IDE controller boot disk selection


hi everyone!

I want to buy a new promise IDE controller card (Ultra133 TX2) but I'm also having some doubts like: will it work for me?

the problem is: the motherboard is a not-so-recent ASUS CUR-DLS and i don't think it directly supports the BIOS option "boot from external devices". So my question is, will I be able to boot the OS from a hard drive attached to the promise controller?

i understand such controller cards have their own bios, to perform hdd detection, TO SELECT BOOT DEVICE, etc. but i don't know if that is enough to force the boot, if the mb bios does not like it.

i would be very interested in hearing from those who have such a card. also i would like to see some opinions about the "quality" of my purchase. will i do better with a highpoint rocket133? which is better supported in linux (kernel 2.6)?

this may be a silly question, since i know the highpoint rocket133 does what i want, but i can't find it anywhere near where i live.

thanks!

[]

Last edited by Clansman; 02-06-2004 at 09:26 PM.
 
Old 02-06-2004, 09:47 PM   #2
jailbait
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Registered: Feb 2003
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"I want to buy a new promise IDE controller card (Ultra133 TX2) but I'm also having some doubts like: will it work for me?"

"i would be very interested in hearing from those who have such a card. also i would like to see some opinions about the "quality" of my purchase. will i do better with a highpoint rocket133? which is better supported in linux (kernel 2.6)?"

I strongly recommend that you buy the HighPoint. Here are the reasons why:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=142413

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=102928

"i can't find it anywhere near where i live."

I bought my HighPoint controller card here:

http://www.gentechpc.com/


___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Last edited by jailbait; 02-06-2004 at 09:51 PM.
 
Old 02-07-2004, 09:06 AM   #3
Clansman
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(i am writing this message for the second time now... i must have closed the other window, or you will find it doubled... :-)

thanks jailbait for the advice.

i read both topics and replies and have a couple of questions:

1. if i still buy the promise card, will it be ok if it is a '76? are there '69 and '76 chips in the same model ultra133 tx2?

i got really confused with the chip numbers of the highpoint cards. i thought that the 37x chips were RAID chips and the 30x were non-RAID. i see in the website that i am wrong.

3. will i be ok if i buy a rocket133?? i mean, is it well supported and with no known glitches?

4. still can you advise me about the original boot question?

thanks.

[]
 
Old 02-07-2004, 02:12 PM   #4
jailbait
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"1. if i still buy the promise card, will it be ok if it is a '76? are there '69 and '76 chips in the same model ultra133 tx2?"

I am not certain. I don't think that Promise supports any of their chipsets on Linux. Nor does Promise release the hardware specs for Linux developers to use. Therefore I am very leery of any Promise chipset.

"3. will i be ok if i buy a rocket133?? i mean, is it well supported and with no known glitches?"

I am not certain. Rocket 100 works fine. HighPoint writes Linux support for all of their chipsets. Therefore I have confidence in HighPoint chipsets working on Linux.

"i understand such controller cards have their own bios, to perform hdd detection, TO SELECT BOOT DEVICE, etc. but i don't know if that is enough to force the boot, if the mb bios does not like it."

My HighPoint card has a secondary BIOS which performs hdd detection. It works fine. The HighPoint BIOS has an option to be switchable to IDE0 and IDE1. This means that the primary and second IDE controllers can be switched so that the HighPoint IDE controller becomes IDE0 and IDE1 and the motherboard IDE chipset becomes IDE 2 and IDE3. My motherboard BIOS also supports this option. In order to boot a hard drive attached to the HighPoint controller I would have to switch the HighPoint controller to IDE0. I have never switched the IDE controller addresses and booted the HighPoint controller because I have never had a reason to do so. When I want to boot a partition on /dev/hde or /dev/hdg I use one of; grub on the MBR, lilo on a boot floppy, or the Fedora rescue CD. All work OK.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Last edited by jailbait; 02-07-2004 at 02:15 PM.
 
Old 02-07-2004, 03:53 PM   #5
Clansman
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Quote:
Originally posted by jailbait
[B]"1. if i still buy the promise card, will it be ok if it is a '76? are there '69 and '76 chips in the same model ultra133 tx2?"

I am not certain. I don't think that Promise supports any of their chipsets on Linux. Nor does Promise release the hardware specs for Linux developers to use. Therefore I am very leery of any Promise chipset.
i see. i will avoid promise cards.
Quote:
"3. will i be ok if i buy a rocket133?? i mean, is it well supported and with no known glitches?"

I am not certain. Rocket 100 works fine. HighPoint writes Linux support for all of their chipsets. Therefore I have confidence in HighPoint chipsets working on Linux.
may be so, but i will not use the vendor's code. i will use the drivers in the 2.6 kernel.
Quote:
"i understand such controller cards have their own bios, to perform hdd detection, TO SELECT BOOT DEVICE, etc. but i don't know if that is enough to force the boot, if the mb bios does not like it."

My HighPoint card has a secondary BIOS which performs hdd detection. It works fine. The HighPoint BIOS has an option to be switchable to IDE0 and IDE1. This means that the primary and second IDE controllers can be switched so that the HighPoint IDE controller becomes IDE0 and IDE1 and the motherboard IDE chipset becomes IDE 2 and IDE3.
so you say that the motherboard can effectively be tricked it it tries to boot up the first harddrive from the first ide channel from the first ide controller it finds?
Quote:
My motherboard BIOS also supports this option. In order to boot a hard drive attached to the HighPoint controller I would have to switch the HighPoint controller to IDE0. I have never switched the IDE controller addresses and booted the HighPoint controller because I have never had a reason to do so. When I want to boot a partition on /dev/hde or /dev/hdg I use one of; grub on the MBR, lilo on a boot floppy, or the Fedora rescue CD. All work OK.
my goal is to boot from a harddrive connected to the hpt controller card.

thanks for the explanations.

[]
 
Old 02-07-2004, 04:19 PM   #6
jailbait
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"may be so, but i will not use the vendor's code. i will use the drivers in the 2.6 kernel."

A vendor can contribute a driver to the kernel as long as the driver is open source. I presume that the kernel HighPoint Driver was written by HighPoint.

Another example of vendor written open source code in the kernel is the IBM code that SCO is so excited about.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Last edited by jailbait; 02-07-2004 at 04:20 PM.
 
Old 02-07-2004, 04:28 PM   #7
Clansman
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Registered: Jan 2004
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agree. my mistake.

what i meant was that i will not be using the highpoint downloadable rpms or other kinds of packages, but instead the kernel driver. i forgot that the kernel driver may have been built with the released highpoint code.

:-)

thanks for the advices. now all i need is to find someone near me (Portugal) willing to sell one of those controller cards.

[]
 
  


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