#1 linux floppy - disks not found - promise U66 disk controller
Configuration: I have an old PII with a Promise Ultra 66 disk controller installed to get around BIOS
limitations for large disks. I had successfully low level formatted a Maxtor 120GB disk on this
configuration but failed when I tried to use the linux boot floppy to copy a Quantum 30 from a
ShowStopper to the Maxtor 120.
In 2.2.4, when RTVPatch is started, I get the message "hdd: driver not present" and the info command
shows no disks. However, the disks were recognized during the linux load and assigned their correct
device ids - hde and hdf.
In 2.4, the linux load itself hangs - both devices are seen but the Quantuum seemed to hang at a
later stage (during irq testing?).
Switching disks to different ide channels on the Promise controller has no effect. (The primary IDE
channel on the motherboard is empty; the secondary has a CDRom and Zip drive attached.)
I switched to another machine (motherboard disk controller) and 2.4 worked fine.
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I do not need a fix for this (I got the job done on another machine) but I'm reporting it in case there is
some systematic problem here - e.g. use of Promise or other secondary disk controllers - that may be of
interest. E.g. if this configuration is a known non-starter, a note in the documentation to that effect would
have helped.
Happy to provide further info if that would be useful.
Thanks to all for RTVPatch!
- Beau Sheil (sheil@best.com)