Hard drives not recognized...no floppy...
 

I have an Intel server board with dual Xeon processors. For whatever reason, it cannot talk to my floppy drive. I've tried 2 different drives, 2 different cables, but no luck.
No biggie, right, to install Linus RH 7.3 from the cd which the system does recognize, except that the dual hard drives in a Raid 0 array are not recognized by Linux without this updated driver file from Intel. Intel's executable that creates the driver disk only creates a floppy, and since I can't get the system to recognize the floppy I can't get the drivers installed to configure my hard drives.
Any help, ideas, suggestions, would be greatly appreciated.
I do have internet access on my other computer, and it runs the other o/s. I'm totally new to Linux and trying to build this box and learn, and I'm really stuck. Intel says that since the chassis (case) isn't "certified" by them, they can't help me. Don't know when a computer case voided support, but in the world of greed anything is possible.
Cheers.
Scott

I don't mean to insult your intelligence, but I have to make sure, you do have the drives plugged into the power supply right?

Also, make sure your jumpers on your cdrom is set to slave (if its the slave on the primary).

If all that is already set, you could have a problem with the board itself. Can you boot any other OS on it?

It would be impossible to insult my intelligence. The server bios (Intel Server Board SE7500WV2) recognizes the hard drives and finds them functional. It does not, however, find my floppy.
Linux, on the other hand, can't find my hard drives until I add these new drivers from Intel, which, as previously mentioned, only comes in a floppy format. I tried copying the files onto a CD and load that way, but NSL.
I haven't tried to load the evil Windows xp...I was thinking instead of selling the mobo on eBay and getting a "retail" board for a workstation, rather than a server board. The whole idea was to get a stable dual processor system for digital content creation (animations) and Linux is the only solid way to go.
Any ideas? I imagine that windows would boot so I could try that. What would you think the next step would be if the end target is getting the hard drives recognizable by Linux?
Thanks for your interest...and help.

Cheers.
scott

Hmm.. If you want to do Digital Media, go with the AMD 64FX chip. You won't need a dual system for that chip (you will however need a special version of Linux, and right now SuSE is the only distro with precompiled 64bit kernels SuSE 9.0 64). I would say do that.

But lets focus on your problem at hand. Ok, no BIOS recognition. That means either the floppy is broken, or the port for the floppy isn't working correctly. Try swapping out floppy drives with your other computer. We will have to do process of elimination here. I know you already switched out cables, so its not the cable.

Oh, and I don't think Windows will boot without a floppy drive. (I'm not sure though).

If we can get your floppy to work, then it won't be a problem getting Linux to access your hdd.

A new floppy drive would cost less the $15. If the drive was OK, you have a spare for your parts bin.

The AMD would be a good option, except that I own 2 Xeon 2.4 processors. And I'm not sure that the major 3D software actually runs on that processor (Maya, SoftImage, etc. may not care, but I've found that these apps are picky and tricky!)
I've swapped floppy drives, and cables in all combinations available to 2 of each (4 combos). Frankly I believe the server board isn't working right, but Intel doesn't want to admit that, so they say that since it isn't a "certified chassis" they can't help me.
I have no way to test the board other than what I'm doing or taking it to a shop with unlimited floppy drives/cables.
So if you have ideas, let me hear them. Right now I'm listing the board on eBay and looking at an ASUS, SuperMicro or GigaByte model.
About that 64 bit processor, is it really on the market? I know AMD is notorious for announcing availability, then only shipping to OEM's for 6-12 months (that happened to me last year so I ended up building a P4-3.06 Intel).
Thanks for your input. If you have any other ideas...Intel thought the cable was at fault, but it came with the floppy, so why? I guess it could be...

cheers.
scott

The 64 bit chip has been out for a while. A good place to buy is www.tcwo.com The 64FX chip is the best for multi-media.

If the floppy drive is new, I doubt its the floppy drive itself. I think its probably the motherboard itself. You could try to take it to your local computer repair shop and have them take a look at it. Or you could sell it on ebay. Is the board still under warantee? If so, send it back for a replacement.