Dell Dimension 3100: keyboard freezes / SATA hdd not found
Hiya!
I'm seeking advice for installing recent Debian 3.1r0a 'Sarge' on Dell
Dimension 3100. Seems as if I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I tried to boot the standard 2.4 kernel. But since a Dell Dimension 3100
comes with a SATA harddisk and a BIOS which offers no option to switch
it to a legacy mode, the installer complains about no found harddisk.
After some googling, I gave the 2.6 kernel a chance. Unfortunately, this
way is no better than the first, because when the kernel boots, it is
obviously unable to find the USB keyboard: the keyboard freezes
immediately. No chance to switch to another virtual console, not even
to change the NumLock state. After some more googling, I even tried the
options 'nopic noapic nolapic acpi=off pci=noacpi' with the same result.
As I can see, my chances are the following:
1. Use a recent Ubuntu Installation (which seems to support SATA) and
migrate to Debian after successful installation. Having no experience
in migrating Linux distributions, I'm not sure if this is a good
solution.
2. Take the harddisk to a IBM eServer 326 which comes with an SATA
interface which is supported at least by the Sarge Netinst image,
install Debian to the disk, move it back to the Dimension and keep the
fingers crossed.
3. Partition the harddiskin advance, try the installer non-interactively
and keep the fingers crossed too.
Any better solutions to make SATA work with the 2.4 installer kernel or
my USB keyboard with the 2.6 kernel?
Yours,
Rene
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