My motherboard (Abit BE7 [non SATA, non-RAID]) currently has no available
EIDE connectors. On the Primary channel, I have two hard drives. hda holds
Windows 98SE, Windows 2000 (yes I know it is a waste and I look forward to
the happy day when I can put the space to better use) and a few extra
storage partitions. hdb holds Mandrake Linux and several storage
partitions. On the secondary channel I have a CD burner as master, and a
DVD reader as slave.

I'd like to get a large HD and use it to install more versions of Linux,
and for additional storage. I just got SuSE 9.1 Professional in the mail
with the Novel free technical resource kit and I'm eager to install it.
Also, I'd like to try a permanent HD install of Knoppix.

So my questions are, if I buy a retail box HD (Western Digital, most
likely) that is larger than 137 GB, shouldn't a drive that size come with
a PCI IDE card in the box that will work even though my current IDE
connectors are all in use?

Will I be able to install additional Linux versions to hdc and continue
multi boot with Lilo? Or would I need to use the new drive for storage
only and will I need to contain my additional Linux installs to hdb (or
hda)?

I know I could solve this problem and free up an IDE connection by buying
a new DVD burner / CD burner combo and a new hard drive, but buying a DVD
burner and a new hard drive is a little more than I want to spend right
now.

--
Tony Sivori

OK, the Linux way.
Most distributions nead about 2 to 3 Gb for install and being "Linux"
can reside on logical partitions.
The "storage" can be shared by all of them.
Your "native" LILO can be configured to boot any one of them---> "man
lilo" and "man lilo.conf" (no quotes) are your friends.
So no need to fight with hardware configurations, unless it is your hobby.

Been there, done it!

Have fun.

Stanislaw.
Slack user from Ulladulla.

]My motherboard (Abit BE7 [non SATA, non-RAID]) currently has no available
]EIDE connectors. On the Primary channel, I have two hard drives. hda holds
]Windows 98SE, Windows 2000 (yes I know it is a waste and I look forward to
]the happy day when I can put the space to better use) and a few extra
]storage partitions. hdb holds Mandrake Linux and several storage
]partitions. On the secondary channel I have a CD burner as master, and a
]DVD reader as slave.

]I'd like to get a large HD and use it to install more versions of Linux,
]and for additional storage. I just got SuSE 9.1 Professional in the mail
]with the Novel free technical resource kit and I'm eager to install it.
]Also, I'd like to try a permanent HD install of Knoppix.

]So my questions are, if I buy a retail box HD (Western Digital, most
]likely) that is larger than 137 GB, shouldn't a drive that size come with
]a PCI IDE card in the box that will work even though my current IDE
]connectors are all in use?

No. Why should it? Drives are drives, IDE bus cards are idebus cards.

]Will I be able to install additional Linux versions to hdc and continue

hde and hdf you mean.

]multi boot with Lilo? Or would I need to use the new drive for storage
]only and will I need to contain my additional Linux installs to hdb (or
]hda)?

Depends on your bios. Some bioses can boot from additional drives, some
cannot. Ie, some bioses can only boot from one of the first two drives.
You can always put their boot or / partitions on to /dev/hda and put the
rest of teh partitions onto /dev/hdy.

]I know I could solve this problem and free up an IDE connection by buying
]a new DVD burner / CD burner combo and a new hard drive, but buying a DVD
]burner and a new hard drive is a little more than I want to spend right
]now.

The only drive manufacturer that bundles an ATA card is Maxtor, their
large drives come with a Promise card. However Maxtor drives are crap, get
a WD or Seagate and buy a Promise card.

hdc and continue

You can install Linux anywhere, there is nothing special about the first
drive. When you do additional installs make sure that you put the
bootloaders on the root partition not the MBR. Do a chain load from the
bootloader on the MBR to the other bootloaders. Both LILO and GRUB can
chain load, here are some examples from one of my lilo.conf files.

other=/dev/hda1
        label="windows"
        table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/hda7
        label="mdk10amd"

Because many BIOSes won't handle drives larger than 137 GB. And I was
under the impression that some brands were bundling PCI cards with the
drives. Probably, it is cheaper than getting the drive returned as
"defective".

Huh? What happened to hdc? Never mind, it doesn't matter.

--
Tony Sivori

Yeah, I've had good luck with WD. Until my luck changes, I'll keep buying
them.

--
Tony Sivori

]> Tony Sivori <TonySivoriMSWO...@yahoo.com> writes:
]>
]>> So my questions are, if I buy a retail box HD (Western Digital, most
]>> likely) that is larger than 137 GB, shouldn't a drive that size come
]>> with a PCI IDE card in the box that will work even though my current
]>> IDE connectors are all in use?
]>
]> No. Why should it? Drives are drives, IDE bus cards are idebus cards.

]Because many BIOSes won't handle drives larger than 137 GB. And I was
]under the impression that some brands were bundling PCI cards with the
]drives. Probably, it is cheaper than getting the drive returned as
]"defective".

?? The controller and the bios are two different things. if the bios cannot
handle greater than 137GB then what has the controller to do with it? you
need to update your bios not your controller.

]>> Will I be able to install additional Linux versions to hdc and continue
]>
]> hde and hdf you mean.

]Huh? What happened to hdc? Never mind, it doesn't matter.

hdc is the first drive on the second ide controller, which on your system
contains the cdrom drive. hdd is the second drive on the second controller
which on your system contains the dvd drive. hde and hdf are the first and
second drives on the  third ide controller-- the new one you installed. (or
if your sysem has SATA controller, they will be e and f, and the fourth
controller will have g and h. )
.

Almost a year ago, I bought 2 WD 200 GB HDs and they came with a promise IDE
card that works fine in Linux. I placed them in a Raid 1 array and they
have been running ever since.

You can purchase a device which is DVD-ROM and CD-RW. I believe they are
fairly inexpensive now.

Most IDE controller cards that I have seen have their own BIOS on board,
and have two controllers to give a total of 4 additional drives. As Bill
said in his reply to this post, they will be seen as hde, hdf, hdg, and
hdh. You have to make sure the controller card that you want can handle
137GB+, as some older ones won't. If the BIOS on your MB does not handle
the 137GB+ drives, some of the add on cards will ask if you want it to
handle all of the drives on your computer. I had one of these on a past
machine, but don't remember the brand of the card. Google would be your
best bet, to find one.

I've seen cards bundled with large drives in the past, when they first
came out, but with all the new MB's that handle them natively, most seem
to be sold separately now. Someone in the thread mentioned Maxtor still
having them bundled, but thought Maxtor was junk. I have six Maxtors at
present, have had no issues with them, and they do come with a three year
warentee. I also have Quantum, Seagate, IBM, and WD drives, and have had
no issues with them either, so it's not a religious thing with me.

I have Linux distros booting from hda, hdc, and hdg at present. Like you,
I have win98SE, & Win2K on there own drive, but I have it, as all my
drives, in a removable drive bay, presently at hde. Having the Windows
drive as anything but hda, and having hda be a Linux drive, means the
grub/lilo bootloader is installed in the MBR of the linux drive, and can't
be overwritten by Windows repairs. My grub stanza for windows, includes
two drive remap lines, and windows boots fine, from hde.

HTH ;-)

--
imotgm

Tony Sivori <TonySivoriMSWO...@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:pan.2004.08.16.19.48.09.960650@yahoo.com:

You probably find price of OEM Drive + 4/8 speed DVD Writer is cheaper
than you think. Ebuyer has LG 8 speed DVD Writer for 37UKP, NEC for
38UKP. + WD 160G IDE 8mb Cache for 50UKP = 88UKP Total.

Move CD Writer to spares box.

Plus no extra PCI cards, and you get a DVD writer!

Not sure if you get PCI-IDE cards bunbled anymore. If you do it will
add to the price of the overall package - and the complexity of your
system. Will it be a chipset that Linux works well with ? etc?

--
Lordy

Please post your grub. I learn by studing examples.

That would often be the solution, but not always. An accessory PCI
controller card is a popular way to get around an older bios/cmos that
cannot be updated or an OS than cannot see hard drives larger than 137 GB.
Google a little and you'll see what I mean. Perhaps the cards contain
their own bios.

My only question was will it still work if the native IDE channels are all
in use. My guess would be "yes", but I like to get advice and confirmation
before I spend money.

--
Tony Sivori

I saw a Lite On 8x DVD burner a few weeks ago for $40 after rebate. The
trouble is that I also need a video card, mine has leaking capacitors and
it could fail at any time. Plus, all the good deals on hard drives, video
cards, and burners are rebate deals (I'm in the U.S.). I don't want to
have $200 tied up for six months all at once.

--
Tony Sivori

I find this statement astonishing!

Do you mean physically leaking as in, fluid escape? If so you are
unbelievably unlucky. This is a phenominally rare occurrence in modern
components.

Do you mean leaking as in, insulation breakdown. If so, you must have
considerable skill and precision equipment to measure this.

It would seem you ave more than enough experience to simply replace the
faulty components at a cost of pennies. Why then, replace the card?

--
Squidge (electronics engineer for over 40 years)

My grub has 20+ stanzas at present, making it rather long, for posting.
What parts are you particularly interested in?

As I have the drives in RDB's I have a boot partition on each Linux drive,
that contains copies of what would normally be in the /boot directory of
any given OS in a named directory; ie /suse9.1, /man10, /slackware9.1.
Grub is installed in the MBR of each Linux drive, so it does not matter
which is hda.

I have, also, multiple menu.lst.123 files in the /grub directory, where
the numbers following menu.lst represent the disk order. When I shuffle
the disk order, I copy the appropriate menu.list.xyz to menu.lst before I
reboot. I also have fstab.n files, where n=(1-4) for the same purpose, so
each OS can boot from whichever of the 4 bays it is in. I don't move the
drives, normally, but if I need something on another disk, not currently
in the machine, I can remove the Windows drive, and replace it with a
linux drive, after changing to the appropriate menu.lst, before shutdown.

If drive hda should fail, removing it from the system, and replacing it
with any other will boot at least one Linux OS, from which I can do the
fstab changes to boot any of the others.

Most of the menu.lst entries point to kernels on the boot partition, with
another stanza pointing to the kernel on the / partition of that OS, so
that I can boot from either. New kernel updates are done in the /boot
directory, tried, and if working properly, copied to the boot partition.
If the update is borked, the kernel on the boot partition is still
bootable.

Some examples are below;

title Mandrake10.0 part
        kernel (hd0,0)/man10/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdc3 devfs=mount resume=/dev/hdc2 splash=verbose vga=788
        initrd (hd0,0)/man10/initrd.img

title Mandrake10.0 boot
        kernel (hd1,2)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdc3 devfs=mount resume=/dev/hdc2 splash=verbose vga=788
        initrd (hd1,2)/boot/initrd.img

title Suse9.1 A part
    kernel (hd0,0)/suse9.1-a/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 vga=0x31a splash=verbose desktop resume=/dev/hda2 showopts
    initrd (hd0,0)/suse9.1-a/initrd

title Suse9.1 A boot
    kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 vga=0x31a splash=verbose desktop resume=/dev/hda2 showopts
    initrd (hd0,2)/boot/initrd

    [ I have a second mirrored Suse9.1 on hdg, which I am writing from. The two synced (except for fstab)
    Suse9.1s act as bootable backups of each other; if hdg dies, a reboot to Suse9.1 A has me back in
    business ]

title Suse9.1 G
    kernel (hd0,0)/suse9.1-e/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdg3 vga=0x31a splash=verbose desktop resume=/dev/hda2 showopts
    initrd (hd0,0)/suse9.1-e/initrd

title Suse9.1 G-boot ###
    kernel (hd3,2)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdg3 ide=nodma vga=0x31a splash=verbose desktop resume=/dev/hda2 showopts
    initrd (hd3,2)/boot/initrd

    [ New kernel would boot only in failsafe, adding ide=nodma to the
    above fixed the problem, ### tells me on boot which stanza has the fix. ]

title Suse9.1 G boot Failsafe
    kernel (hd3,2)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdg3 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0  3
    initrd (hd3,2)/boot/initrd

    [ This failsafe is included, as I'm testing a new kernel at present. ]

title SuSE 8.2
    kernel (hd0,0)/suse8.2/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda15 vga=0x31a  hdb=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi hddlun=0 splash=verbose showopts
    initrd (hd0,0)/suse8.2/initrd

title SuSE 8.2-111
    kernel (hd0,0)/suse8.2/vmlinuz-111 root=/dev/hda15 vga=0x31a  hdb=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi hddlun=0 splash=verbose showopts
    initrd (hd0,0)/suse8.2/initrd

    [ Choice of kernels for Suse8.2 ]

title Slackware 9.1
    kernel (hd0,0)/slackware9.1/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda12 vga=791 hdb=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi

    [ Note that Slack has no initrd, as there are no modules, everything's compiled into the kernel ]

title Windows E
    root (hd2,0)
    map (hd2) (hd0)
    map (hd0) (hd2)
    makeactive
    chainloader +1

This boots either Win98SE, or Win2K via the ntldr/boot.ini on hde1.

The rest of menu.lst is, more or less, repeats of the above, except for
different OS's. The pattern for the stanzas should be apparent from the
above, and includes examples for hda, hdc, hde, and hdg, [ grub (hd0),
(hd1), (hd2), and (hd3) ]

HTH ;-)

--
imotgm

ODD? Anyway I saw a sapphire Radeon 9700 for about $100. Shopping around
could get it less, and while not the latest and greatest. It should be
good enough for Doom3.

--
-- James Fenimore Cooper
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes,
knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.

Leaking physically. The capacitors are defective.

It is a common defect these days. Millions of motherboards are failing
prematurely.

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Feb/bch20030207018535.htm

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/feb03/ncap.html

http://www.motherboardrepair.com/

Getting the right capacitor locally in small quantities has proven to be
impossible for me. I phoned nearly every supply house and TV repair shop
in my city. One sympathetic TV repair shop even special ordered the
capacitors I needed to fix a MSI 6163 Pro (a BX based board) motherboard
with bad caps. Three months went by and the caps never arrived. I canceled
the order and the board still sits needing repair.

--
Tony Sivori

The brand of capacitor? I don't know what is on the failing video card. On
my failed MSI mainboard, the brand of capacitor is "Chhsi".

I don't play games on my computer. All I want is nice 2D graphics (with
the ability to open a 100 MB or larger picture file) with 32 bit color
depth and a high refresh rate (85 to 100 Hz). I would like to add TV Out
capability.

--
Tony Sivori

continue

Those get reserved for the first IDE controller on the mobo. They are
detected by hardware address.

Mobo...
IDE0 = /dev/hda /dev/hdb
IDE1 = /dev/hdc /dev/hdd

PCI EIDE controller...

IDE2 = /dev/hde /dev/hdf
IDE3 = /dev/hdg /dev/hdh

Eh? What do you mean by "right capacitor"? What other quality do you
need for them other than their capacitance and a minimum voltage
tolerance? I presume these are electrolytics, since they are leaking,
which makes them about the order of 100uF, and probably used to clean
the power-supply rails, which means they don't need to survive more
than about 15V. And over-capacitance and over-voltage would be fine too.

But why? What was wrng with looking some up in the Maplins catalogue,
or whatever you have locally (Radio Shack?).

Peter

Well it has DVI, VGA and TV out.

http://www.sapphiretech.com/media/9700pro/9700boxcard.jpg

The Matrox Millennium is suppose to have exceptional video quality.
However you will pay for that. You might be able to pick up a used
G-series card.

http://www.matrox.com/mga/3d_gaming/products.cfm

--
-- James Fenimore Cooper
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes,
knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.

On 2004-08-17, P.T. Breuer <p...@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:

Or the Jameco, Digi-Key, or Mouser catalogs?  At least one
of them should have anything you could need for a few (US)
dollars in any quantity down to 1.  Please inform if you
need the URLs or phone numbers.

Good luck.

Robert Riches
spamtra...@verizon.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

Yep and yes they do.

Yes it wll. You wil now be able to have 8 IDE devices.

]> > Tony Sivori <TonySivoriMSWO...@yahoo.com> wrote:
]> >> trouble is that I also need a video card, mine has leaking capacitors
]> >> and it could fail at any time.

]> > It would seem you ave more than enough experience to simply replace the
]> > faulty components at a cost of pennies. Why then, replace the card?
]>
]> Getting the right capacitor locally in small quantities has proven to be

]Eh? What do you mean by "right capacitor"? What other quality do you
]need for them other than their capacitance and a minimum voltage
]tolerance? I presume these are electrolytics, since they are leaking,
]which makes them about the order of 100uF, and probably used to clean
]the power-supply rails, which means they don't need to survive more
]than about 15V. And over-capacitance and over-voltage would be fine too.

Very bad idea if you do not know exactly what theyare for. They might
simply be filtering caps, but also might be tuned. Not having the circuit
diagram makes deciding impossible. Get exactly the same capacitance. If you
cannot figure out what that is, or have trouble with a soldering iron,
don't even think about it. A multilayer board is very easy to destroy.

]> impossible for me. I phoned nearly every supply house and TV repair shop
]> in my city.

]But why? What was wrng with looking some up in the Maplins catalogue,
]or whatever you have locally (Radio Shack?).