On Mon, 2005-03-14 at 19:51, Jess Anderson wrote: > >>isolinux disk error 80 AX=4280 drive 9F > >>press any key to try again > > >>Suggestions on where to go from here would be most welcome. > > (In all of the following, everything I tried resulted in the > same error message as above.) > Not a good sign. :( > >Three possibilities come to mind. > > >First try to find out which SATA controller chip set you have > The Southbridge chipset is VIA VT8237. The BIOS can for sure > see the drives because it reports the right stuff for the > drive on SATA channel 0. > That means the board is seeing the drives. > >If you can find out which SATA controller you have you should > >be able to google or find out if Linux supports that chipset. > > There's the rub, near as I can tell. Google led me to a mailing > list called VIArena, and since early 2003 through last year > there are messages bemoaning that VIA has not provided linux > drivers for the VT8237 chipset. The onboard sound and ethernet > controllers are also in that chip, though I have spare PCI > cards for those functions, push come to shove. > > So apparently it will have to be a third-party driver to > support SATA, if indeed there is one that works. VIA > Technology's own web site was unhelpful. If anyone has found > such a beast, please let me know. > You might check over on the developers list. They may have drivers in development that support your chip set. > >Second you might try installing using a nodma option. Have seen > >many problems during install where dma caused problems. You > >can specify this as an option during install. > > I tried a number of options: noprobe, nodma, noapci -- all had > the same result as above. > Had to try that one. Was hoping this would work. > >And you might grab a copy of knoppix or one of the other live > >CD versions of linux and try booting that. Those don't need > >hard drives to boot to a running linux system. This will let > >you know what parts of your system are compatible. And if you > >get it booted you should be able to try and see the harddrive > >and format it using the live CD. > > That's something to consider, certainly. And in general a live > CD is useful to have around. In the meantime, accustomed as I > am to throwing money at problems, I've ordered a regular Ultra > 133 ATA drive, which I'm fairly certain will at least get me > to the next problem, which could turn out to be video card > drivers, since it's a medium high-end card: Radeon 9800PRO, > AGP 8x, 128MB DDR. > Yes, a rescue CD has saved me several times. > In the meantime, I can try to boot the hard disk from my > Win2K box via USB. I try not to get caught up in resentment > over the total domination of Microsoft, but it seems to me > the hardware people could do themselves a significant favor > by more adequately recognizing the Linux market. Of course, > y'all know that already... <sigh> That is one of the problems going the linux root with very new hardware. The ASUS P5GD2 deluxe board I have been working on for the last month required special driver for the on board ethernet. I still don't have the on board wireless working. The Linuxant driverloader caused the system to hang. And I have not found a native driver for the Marvell chip set. -- Scot L. Harris webid@xxxxxxxxxx A couple more shots of whiskey, women 'round here start looking good. [something about a 10 being a 4 after a six-pack? Ed.]
