"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