Hi All,
while trying to install MDk 10.1 or 10.2/2005LE on a AsusPC-DL Deluxe with 1 G RAM and hda=hdb=Maxtor DMax9 80 G, hdc=DVDROM LiteOn XJ-HD166S,hdd=DVDRAM BTC DRW1004IM, hde=hdf=Maxtor DMax 200 G, sda=sdb=sdc=sdd=Maxtor DMax 200G SATA I was not able to have Diskdrake show hde and hdf. In more detail, at present I have set BIOS to IDE for both ICH5R and Promise Fasttrack378 IDE/SATA RAID controllers. This system had previously been tested installing a dual/boot Lilo starting from (IDE0-slave) hdb and managing a MDK 10.1CE on itself and Win2k on hda (IDE0-master).
All other disks are correctly seen by Win, even in the case they are arranged in arrays.
Diskdrake correctly identified ICH5 and Promise, but refused to show the disks pertaining to ICH5 ATARAID1 <-Ide2 (ide0 and ide1 as described).
It appeared as only the first 4 IDE drives were enabled. I have looked around for documentation, found that could be necessary to create additional devices with MAKEDEV, but maybe because I'm not so skilled, I had no success. Then I tried to re-install passing to the kernel parameters as IDE2=0x1e8,0x3ee hde=24792,255,63 hdf=24792,255,63. When installation started, despite correct modules for ICH5 and Promise were installed, Diskdrake, called by installation for partition choosing, came up once more without the damn disks. I'm giving up... Does someone know any trick? Thanks in advance

lol... rule number one... don't buy servers without checking first, been there and tore my hair out.

As a rule... there is no fix unless there is a dd fix disc from the hardware people. Good news is that harware vendors have become quite good now at providing them. So check their site for a fix to load from floppy or usb before you start installs. It is not uncommon to have to use a boot disc for drivers before installing on server hardware.

Regards
Richard

Thank you, Richard,
I already checked on Intel site: their drivers are useful for kernels 2.4, not 2.6
Moreover I think that's only my distro problem that for some reason screws up
all IDE disks over hdd: I didn't say this bevore for sake of brevity, but when I
tried MAKEDEV hde, I obtained an hde directory on /dev, out of directory ide
on wich it could be expected to be mounted and crowded wit a lot of apparently
non related device drivers. There was an ataraid directory too, anyway.`
As I told, controllers seem to be recognized.
Cheers
Alberto