[vox-tech] Plextor PX-712A not working [mostly fixed]

[Dylan Beaudette]

On Thursday 13 January 2005 02:50 pm, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> 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.
>

Thanks Pete!

Turns out that when i played around with the SATA/PATA config stuff in the 
BIOS, it added a new boot order list for hard disks. Forgetting that an 
external USB disk was plugged in (and not realizing that the BIOS would even 
see it) i never thought to check the hard disk boot order settings!

Now that I can boot my machine, with the Promise IDE controller enabled, i 
will continue to work on the CDROM issue...

-- 
Dylan Beaudette
Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group
University of California at Davis
530.754.7341