Re: New question on that sata controller

[Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@gmail.com>]

On Saturday 15 December 2007, Alistair John Strachan wrote:
>On Saturday 15 December 2007 21:24:09 Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Saturday 15 December 2007, Robert Hancock wrote:
>> >Gene Heskett wrote:
>> >> Greetings;
>> >>
>> >> When I asked about a sata controller earlier this week, I gave a link
>> >> to it. Unforch (maybe) when it actually arrived, the cards box showed a
>> >> silicon image chip, and the card had a via.  So much for getting what I
>> >> ordered...
>> >>
>> >> The required module then was sata_via, not sata_uli, and it seems to be
>> >> working ok.  However, this one claims its a raid controller according
>> >> to an lspci -v:
>> >>
>> >> 01:0a.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6421 IDE RAID
>> >> Controller (rev 50)
>> >>         Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6421 IDE RAID Controller
>> >>         Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 19
>> >>         I/O ports at 9400 [size=16]
>> >>         I/O ports at 9800 [size=16]
>> >>         I/O ports at 9c00 [size=16]
>> >>         I/O ports at a000 [size=16]
>> >>         I/O ports at a400 [size=32]
>> >>         I/O ports at a800 [size=256]
>> >>         [virtual] Expansion ROM at e9000000 [disabled] [size=64K]
>> >>         Capabilities: [e0] Power Management version 2
>> >>
>> >> I just noted that the Expansion ROM is disabled, but I didn't see any
>> >> jumpers to enable it on the card prior to installing it.  Does anyone
>> >> know how this is supposed to work?  I would like to make it directly
>> >> bootable but I believe this has to be 'enabled' for that.
>> >
>> >It's usually normal for it to be disabled after boot, I believe. Are you
>> >getting anything showing up on boot indicating its BIOS is active?
>>
>> No, not a thing.  Also invisible in the mainboards bios config AFAICT.
>
>Normally this option is called "Enable Option ROM" or enable "INT 13/19h
>hook". See if you have such an option. It's surprising this isn't enabled by
>default.

I don't recall seeing such an option, but I'll look again when I next reboot.

>However, the BIOS still might not support directly booting off the
> controller, I'm afraid.

I think I'm going to have to maintain my ide boot partition & play tricks with 
the kernel arguments line to make the switch to that drive after the kernel 
and initrd are loaded from it, which should make it properly visible oncve 
that kernel is running.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
His ideas of first-aid stopped short of squirting soda water.
		-- P.G. Wodehouse
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