[conspire] Problem accessing SATA controller

[Mark S Bilk]

On Mon, Nov 05, 2007 at 07:50:14PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
>Quoting Mark S Bilk (mark at cosmicpenguin.com):
>
>> Nothing in dmesg except libata reporting that it has loaded.
>> Nothing when I try to access /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, and nothing
>> about SATA when Yast's hardware scan runs.
>
>Then, the kernel definitely didn't see the hard drive.  dmesg is where
>you would always see the drive ID'd.

The 300 GB disk -- Seagate ST3300831AS -- isn't seen either, 
everything is the same as with the 500 GB.  The 300 has an 8 MB
cache, so is older, so maybe less likely to be affected by the 
incompatibility mentioned in your sata.add file.

dmesg does have the line "SCSI subsystem initialized" during 
kernel bootup.  Maybe without the Sil3112 driver installed yet, 
the controller chip doesn't get initialized.

The BIOS doesn't see the disk either, but there's no mention
in the BIOS manual about anything SATA.  I'll check to see
if there's a later motherboard BIOS version.

Anyone know of a nice cheap, e.g., $30, PCI-SATA controller card 
that's well supported in Linux, and maybe even sold in Fry's?

I should upgrade to an AMD 64X2 6400, but that would probably
cost about $800 all told and a lot of research time.  Half 
my memory crapped out last week, so I'm down to one 1GB stick,
running non-interleaved, so slower, but it's still usable.
I want to install openSuSE 10.3 with that 500 GB SATA disk
(which the 10.3 installer doesn't see either).  I have a lot 
of other things to do, so if I can get the present system 
to see the SATA drive and install 10.3 it's worth $30 or so.

  Mark