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Promise Ultra100TX2 PCI IDE controller, now working in Win98 after
disabling com2 to free up an IRQ (computer has 2 pairs of USB, 2 com port, 
ethernet and sound cards, etc.).

Win98/System/SCSI Controller (!)/Resources says the device is using:
I/O  B400-B407, B000-B0003, A800-A807, A400-A403, A000-A00F

ide0 and ide1, I presume, since I disabled onboard ide.

Linux cannot find any ide devices so won't boot, except for the 2-floppy 
BL3.50, which says
ALI15X3:  device enabled (Linux)
ALI15X3:  not 100% native mode:  will probe IRQs later
It never does this and never finds ide's, unlike on another computer, 
without the addin controller, which then lists ide0 and ide1 i/o, 
followed by hda etc.

The chipset is, I think, on the motherboard, not the PCI card.

The instructions for using the card in linux say to look in /proc/pci to 
get the I/O addresses for the card, but BL3.50 floppy version does not 
list any /proc/pci, though BL2 ext2 does.  It is supposed to list four 
addresses and an IRQ.

Why does BL3.50 floppy not have /proc/pci on both computers?


If these addresses are 0x9400, 0x9000, 0x8800, 0x8400, boot with
lilo and:

ide2=0x9400, 0x9002  (adding 2 to the second and fourth addresses) 
ide3=0x8800, 0x8402

Assuming these are the I/O addresses for the PCI controller card.

Win98, System, SCSI Controller (that is where it put the IDE controller 
card), Resources, lists I/O addresses as five ranges:
B400-B407, B000-B003, A800-A807, A400-A403, A000-A00F

How do I translate these five ranges to fit the linux instructions?
Maybe ide0=0xB400, 0xB002
      ide1=0xA800, 0xA402, 0xA012  (F plus 2?)


It is not possible to boot from a CD with this IDE controller or I would 
try DSL or Ubuntu.  Maybe I can chroot to them from BL3 floppy.

For a buggy kernel 2.6 someone suggested acpi=off, which did not help.
Nor did ide0=autotune.

In 2004 someone in Slovakia at a Czech forum also could not boot linux 
with this card and a new kernel 2.6.5.  'nevie bootovat'.  It won't boot 
for me with 2.2.26 or 2.2.16 or 2.4.31.  Does not see the controllers or 
therefore the hds.

A German with this card says his computer 'nicht mehr bootet'.  BIOS 2.10.
No responses to either of these.

Other people had other problems, but at least it found the controller on 
PCI bus, and then the drives.  ide=ata66 should make it go faster with a 
newer drive and cable.  You can compile a kernel or modules to support 
this card at faster speed (pdc202xx.o in kernel 2.4).

'The Promise cards don't seem to be able to boot off their hard disks if 
they're not in the first four disks recognized by your system BIOS.'
I have disabled onboard IDE and don't have any SCSI disks.

Someone updated the BIOS from 2.10 and got corrupt data.  The update works 
with drivers over 137GB and linux boot CDs. I will try updating to 2.20.15 
which  might make it boot from linux CD at least.

BIOS sees these cards as SCSI.  I disabled SYMBIOS SCSI CONTROLLER onboard 
(I don't think it even exists, no more than the ISA slots referred to in 
setup).

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org