Re: Newbie Question: Linux & ATA100 Drives
Soul Computer said:
> My documentation indicates that the ATA100 controller will boot to DOS.
> I was wondering if this meant the controller, and the drives on it, would
> also boot to Linux? I would assume that the drivers would have to be
> loaded for optimum performance, but this is an *old* computer, and
> getting a new drive for it that is *not* ATA100 is out of the question.
>
DOS is different from linux of course. DOS relys soley on the
BIOS to interact with the disks. Linux completely overrides the
bios. If it can boot dos, it can boot linux(at least the kernel),
whether it actually can boot a distribution depends on the controller
if the kernel supports it(even an unsupported kernel will boot
to the point it tries to mount the filesystem then it will crash).
Linux is so different that I had an old IBM P75 a couple years ago,
shortly after the Y2K rolloveR(I think it was coincidence), the
bios all of a sudden stopped detecting the IDE disk(1GB or something).
I booted a dos floppy and dos too said "no fixed disks present".
I booted a linux floppy and it detected the drives just fine.
there was another instance where I had a larger drive then
the bios could support(I think), but when linux booted, it said
something like "BIOS says drive is XXXXXxx, but this is wrong,
re-configuring for XXXXXXXXX". I thought that was cool. linux
knew the bios was wrong and correctly re-configured the drive
so it could see the entire disk.
but you still do need drivers for the controller. I have not
seen any ATA/100 drives that don't work just fine on an
ATA/33 controller, I have many configured this way. my Sun
Ultra10s are ATA/33 at best, my Intel L440GX and Supermicro
boards are all ATA/33. ATA/100 drives work without a hitch.
nate
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