Re: Is it possible to boot from PCI-IDE controller?

From: Dances With Crows (danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows_at_usa.net)
Date: 04/14/04 

Date: 14 Apr 2004 13:06:16 GMT

On 14 Apr 2004 05:48:56 -0700, BK staggered into the Black Sun and said:
> The IDE controller on the motherboard appears to be faulty. The BIOS
> can detect any device I attach to it, but it won't boot, reporting a
> disk failure. This is the same for CDROM, floppy, CD, HD and a Compact
> Flash IDE disk with an embedded Linux all of which boot up in another
> PC.

The floppy controller is separate from the IDE controller, so if both
floppy boot and hard disk boot fail, I question whether the motherboard
is worth saving. It probably has other things wrong with it.

> Now I'd like to know if it is in principle possible to boot off a disk
> attached to a PCI-IDE controller instead of the internal controller

Should be no problem. Most of the PCI IDE cards out there have BIOSes
in them that can handle booting off a disk--not a CD-ROM, many IDE cards
can't handle ATAPI devices very well.

> and if so, what do I have to watch out for?

See first paragraph. In an x86, the motherboard is the most difficult
thing to diagnose problems with and the most difficult thing to replace
when it breaks. 

-- 
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin /    mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com     /                Hire me! 
-----------------------------/ http://crow202.dyndns.org/~mhgraham/resume

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