3rd / 4th IDE Interfaces
 

I installed a 3rd IDE interface MicroFirmware ATA PRO PNP (at the quarternary IDE interface address) and moved my CDROM to that interface as a slave to a Syquest drive. I've tried booting linux with the option hdX=cdrom (where hdX has been hde, hdf, hdg, and hdh) but it does NOT help. I get the following error messages at bootup:

hdX: no response (status = 0xff), resetting drive
hdX: no response (status = 0xff)
hdX: ATAPI cdrom (?)
ide3 at 0x168-0x16f,0x36e on irq 10
hdX: status timeout: status=0xff { Busy }
hdX: drive not ready for command
hdX: ATAPI reset timed-out, status=0xff
ide3: reset timed-out, status=0xff
end_request: I/O error, dev 22:40 (hdX), sector 0
hdX: ATAPI 129X DVD-ROM drive 43792kb Cache
Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.54

Incidentally, Windows 98 messages that it cannot find the CDROM at bootup, but then has no problem finding it once it gets into the GUI and the CDROM works fine.

What happens when you don't use the hdX=cdrom option?

Incidentely, becuase Win9x is basically just a frontend to DOS (with some fancy bits added as well), there is a cheating method of getting the CD rom drive to work. When you boot from the Win98 boot-floppy you're given the option to load CDRom drivers, whilst not loading Windows. If these drivers are loaded before Windows does (on a normal boot), even if Windows can't see the hardware, it excepts that it is there. Normally, though, this only provides rudimentary access to CDs and isn't as fast as it could be with the proper CD/IDE-interface drivers.

Thanks for your reply!
if hdx=cdrom is not used, i cannot get to the cdrom. i tried:
mount /dev/hdx /mnt/cdrom -t iso9660
and the message that comes up says something to the effect that linux doesn't think /dev/hdx is a block device (sorry i'm not at the pc right now so i can't give you the exact message)

If you're using devfs, then a link should be made automagically to /dev/ide/host3/something/somethingelse. First check if /dev/hdx is a valid filename (ls -l /dev/hd*), and also check if it's linked.

Also, is this helpful?

http://store.firmware.com/cgi-bin/mfi/atapro.html

it suggests pressing S during boot for more config options, and so on, and so forth.

Your drive could also be sda which is the case on my external hd.