grub assist needed

[tony mollica <tjm3@threedogs.net>]

Hello.  Looking for a grub assist to make my system boot the way I would
like, hopefully without making the system un-bootable as a result.

I have a nicely working system booting from a SATA drive with two kernels
onboard, one generic and one k7 kernels. The system config is one SATA
drive, one IDE dvd burner on the one and only onboard IDE channel and
an additional Silcon Image 680a IDE card (working properly but no drive
on either channel).  The si680a is wired to a removeable tray that I would
like to be able to change drives.  The system was originally loaded without
this drive in the bay and so grub knows nothing about it.  If I shutdown and
reboot with the removeable drive (ide) in the bay it obviously changes the
drive designations as the si680a drive is recognized first, no boot sector
is found on this drive and errors and no boot occurs.

I would like to be able to boot the system automagically whether or not
the removeable drive is loaded it the bay but I'm at a loss for how to do
this safely.  There is no BIOS setting to help decide which drive is first,
second or otherwise.  I find no options for the si680a driver that would
delay or change the order of the drive recognition.  I need a way to always
have it boot from the same drive no matter what other disks loaded on
the IDE channels.

Any suggestions?

thanks,
--

-----------------
tony
tjm3@threedogs.net