I'm trying to get Linux up and running on an SN95G5 shuttle. It has a nForce3 chipset, with SATA, and I'm using a 160 GB seagate hard disk on SATA. But mandrake will just not install. I have tried disabling other IDE channels in the Bios etc, and the SATA is definately enabled- I had no trouble installing XP on it.
I would be really greatful for any help. I have spent so long trying to get this working, it's just driving me mad now.
Here is the error in more detail:
After I've chosen my language etc it says:
"Found "nVidia Corp.|","parport_pc","imm","ppa" interfaces. Do you have another one? (Options are Yes/No/Hardware Info)
I press no, it says "An error occured.-no valid decives were found on which to create new file systems. Please check your harware for the cause of this problem."
If I press Yes, I can then choose "sata_nv (low-level driver for NVIDIA nForce SATA controller)." After selection I then get :
"Found "sata_nv (low-level driver for NVIDIA nForce SATA controller)","nVidia Corp.|","parport_pc","imm","ppa" interfaces. Do you have another one? (Options are again Yes/No/Hardware Info)
The no gives me the same error "An error occured.-no valid decives were found on which to creat new file systems. Please check your harware for the cause of this problem."
The Yes gives me a list of driver thingys to choose from again. I'm in an endless loop.

Take this with a grain of salt as I may be off base...

It sounds like the SATA driver you are telling it to load, is NOT able to initialize or find the SATA interface.

This is probably due to the driver having been written before the motherboard's PCI ID's were available.

In other words the kernel used by the installer has no support for the SATA chipset on your motherboard.

The only fix I can think of would be to create a seperate boot floppy with either a newer kernel or the existing SATA drivers modified to recognize your motherboard.

Unfortunately this is non-trivial.

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately I'm a linux newbie, so don't know where to start with kernels etc...
Tired 10.2 beta 2, and got an error, after it showed this for a long time:
"installing driver for hard drive controller nVidia Corporation|CK8S Serial ATA Controller (v2.5)"
Error:
"insmod'ing module sata_nv failed at /
usr/bin/perl-install/modules.pm line 311."

In this latter case the kernel is trying to load the appropriate module for your drive from disk, but it cannot do so since no root filesystem is yet mounted.

The solution is to build a new initrd (ram image) which includes the needed module, so it will be available upon boot.

Another option is to build a new kernel and make the driver part of the kernel.

Since you are a newbie, you may find this all a bit difficult.

Also there is some question as to if the existing kernel is able to properly ID your motherboard's SATA interface and provide a driver for it.