Re: SCSI(boot)drive + Extra EIDE Drive?
On Sun, Apr 29, 2001 at 04:53:47PM -0400, Sebastian Canagaratna wrote:
> I was trying to add an EIDE (30 GIG) hard drive but I am unable to get
> either the Bios or Linux to recognize it. EZ drive complains about
> not having an ide drive at 80H either because of a SCSI drive or bad
> bios entries. I pulled out the ScSI card , but this did not make a
> difference.
I think you just answered your own questions. The BIOS may too old to
support the larger drive configuration. Check the motherboard vendor's
web site for an updated BIOS or look at getting a IDE controller card.
Personally I recommend the Promise Ultra(66|100) PCI cards. They're about
$30.
Before you open the case up though, check the BIOS configuration and make
sure that the on-board IDE controllers are enabled. It's common practice to
disable them when using SCSI in order to free up IRQs.
> I thought Linux was independent of the bios. ( I am using Slink, Linux
AFAIK, the kernel is able to get around some bugs in the BIOS, but it is
still dependent on the BIOS to find out about peripheral cards, disks, etc.
I don't think that Linux is dependent on the geometry info stored in the
BIOS either, but a reasonably correct setting may be required in order to
get LILO to boot from it.
> The EIDE is a Western Digital Drive, and I read the FAQ in the western
> Digital site, and they give the impression that you can have both
> a SCSI and an drive together, though they treat only the case where
> the boot drive is an ide drive. I'd rather avoid this configuration.
I think that some older WD drives had flaky firmware that could cause
problems with DMA enabled. While this isn't contributing to your
difficulties right now, it's something to be aware of.
> The computer has an award bios (1996).
More reason to believe that the BIOS can't recognize the large drive. Check
for updates.
> Is the drive faulty? What else should I try?
I doubt the drive is faulty if you just bought it. The fact that it's not
recognized by the BIOS is a good indicator that the BIOS is the problem.
-B
--
Brandon High armitage@freaks.com
Did the aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
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