[vox-tech] Plextor PX-712A not working [now i can't boot]

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Thu 13 Jan 05,  3:52 PM, Dylan Beaudette <dylan at iici.no-ip.org> said:
> > On Thu 13 Jan 05,  3:29 PM, p <p> said:
> >> On Thu 13 Jan 05, 12:22 PM, Ken Herron <kherron+lugod at fmailbox.com>
> >> said:
> >> > Dylan Beaudette wrote:
> >> >
> >> > >The [cdrom] drive is connected to the primary IDE channel, and my
> >> hard
> >> > >drive is connected to a serial IDE channel. As of kernel 2.6 my hard
> >> drive
> >> > >is accessed as a SCSI device. However, my cdrom drive does not answer
> >> to
> >> > >requests sent to hda,hdb,hdc,hdd ... nor to any SCSI devices...
> >> >
> >> > Dylan, are you able to access both the CD and the hard drive from
> >> other
> >> > operating systems or earlier Linux revisions when they're wired this
> >> > way? I wonder if the motherboard has disabled the primary IDE channel
> >> > because one of the serial ATA ports is in use, or maybe Linux can't
> >> > drive both at the same time for some reason. Perhaps moving the CD to
> >> > the secondary IDE bus would do the trick.
> 
> UPDATE:
> Before touching any hardware this is what I found:
> CDROM drive plugged into the Primary PATA connector
> Hard Drive plugged into the Primary SATA connector
> 
> POST screen lists Hard Disk as being connected to secondary IDE, CDROM
> connected to primary
> 
> ->the BIOS was using AUTO for all configurations of the SATA/PATA subsystem
> ->the PATA/SATA controller is a ICH5R, but there is an integrated Promise
> PDC20378 PATA/SATA controller, which was disabled in the BIOS...
> 
> 
> I then attempted to change how the BIOS configured to the SATA/PATA
> subsystem on the motherboard, using the ICH5R controller... no combination
> of settings would work, and in fact I was able to make the CDROM drive
> disapear from the POST screen with one permutation. After giving up, I
> reverted all of the BIOS settings to what they had previously been (as far
> as I can tell). Now the system will not boot off of the hard drive - i.e.
> the grub screen does not even come up!
> 
> I was able to boot into KNOPPIX with a 2.4 kernel, and mount my hard
> drive, and all seems to be fine.... I suspect that the MBR got hosed
> somehow... but this makes no sense to me at all.
> 
> >From KNOPPIX i tried to use the grub-install command, using my menu.1st
> file as the configuration file. All seemed to work, but the machine still
> refuses to load grub at startup...
> 
> 
> Any ideas? I am really stuck now!
> 
> Dylan

I'm nearly 100% certain that your MBR wasn't hosed to begin with.  Two
guesses:

1. You disabled SATA and didn't realize it.

2. Your BIOS boot order doesn't have the SATA in it.

In your BIOS, you may have entries that look like HDD0 and HDD1.  These
aren't your SATA drives -- they're your PATA drives.  You prolly have an
entry that looks like SATA1 and SATA2.

Pete

-- 
The mathematics of physics has become ever more abstract, rather than more
complicated.  The mind of God appears to be abstract but not complicated.
He also appears to like group theory.  --  Tony Zee's "Fearful Symmetry"

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