I tried loading RH9 and Fedora onto my desktop as a dual-boot with xp professional. Neither RH9 or Fedora will talk to my SATA HDD. I understand this is not so much a problem with the HDD but with the controller, which I believe to be a VIA 8237. My motherboard is a Chaintech 9VJL5. HDD are a Maxtor 80GB SATA as the boot drive and a SAMSUNG 120GB data drive.

First question is whose problem is this? The manufacturer of the controller or RH9's? Either way it is my problem because RH will not load. I have used RH before on EIDE drives with no problem. I am by no stretch a linux-educated man, I just desire to learn more about and then transition fully to it once I am comfortable.

I have no idea how to compile a kernel, or really even what that means yet. Can anyone give me a dumbed down version of what I need to do to make this work save getting a new HDD to use as the boot drive? I prefer to use Red Hat as the OS, although I guess Fedora would be good now that the transition to it is on.

I have read many a forum and come to no solution, can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks,
Sick

Hmm, it does look like you might have to compile a new kernel. It is not difficult. but i cant help you much because i dont use redhat and there probably are some distro specifics that are useful..

Heres a link to how to compile a 2.6 http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/799/3733

or google kernel compile howto, do some reading

it might be a little confusing at first, but it is a trial and error thing.

something else: try using knoppix on that machine. Knoppix is a live cd, it runs of the cd. If it runs, you can use it to determine what hardware and the modules you need to load.