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driver on the f*cking floppy and then pass it do mandrake to
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To do this you probably need to find the exact module for the kernel to load, and then press some kind of options key indicated on the boot menu to pass options to the kernel.
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should a 32 bit amd "only" driver work on a amd 64
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(and your other questions about 32 vs 64)
Older versions of 64-bit processors only worked with 64-bit software, but recent processors can work with both. That is, you can have 64-bit OS and 64-bit drivers, 32-bit drivers, 32-bit OS and 32-bit drivers, but you cannot have 32-bit OS and 64-bit drivers. That is, the OS needs to know how to run the drivers. 64-bit linux can do 32 or 64, and 32-bit can only do 32-bit. Ergo, I don't think this is a big problem for your system.
Is this your first time using linux (no insult intended if you're a veteran)? Because if you are trying to load the kernel modules in at boot time it might be pretty complicated for a beginner. The hardware supported is directly related to which distribution you have. I haven't used Mandrake in a while, but, I do have an AMD64 processor, an Nvidia Nforce2 chipset, and a Seagate 250Gig SATA drive (which seems similar to your setup), and Xubuntu (and Ubuntu and KUbuntu) works great on it, as long as there is no regular IDE drive connected as well (it refused to see the SATA drive as the first one and wouldn't boot right, so I removed the IDE drive since I never use it anyway).
In summary:
32-bit can run on 64-bit, but 64-bit can't run on 32-bit.
Hardware support is directly related to the distribution, so if this is your first try at linux, you might try a different distro, such as Ubuntu. (I also know that Fedora Core 5 worked on this setup, but that's not as newbie friendly)
I hope this helps you!
PS- if you stick with Mandriva/Mandrake read all the installation documentation on their website, that might help.