How to connect four edi devices?

[Eric "Shubes"]

Josef Lowder wrote:
> .
> On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:54:41 -0700, Eric \"Shubes\" wrote
> Joe Lowder wrote: 
>>> I've tried dozens of combinations, including 'auto'
>>> but nothing I have tried will get bios to see *anything* 
>>> on the second ide channel.  No HD, no CD, nothing. 
>>>
>>> One might conclude that the second ide channel on the mother board
>>> is defective ... except I am able to read the contents of anything 
>>> connected on that second channel after booting up. 
>>>
>>> So, I wonder if the bios might be defective? 
>> I'm under the impression that some older BIOSes are unable to boot 
>> from the secondary IDE channel. This may or may not be correct, so 
>> don't "take it as gospel". ;)
>> -- Eric 'shubes'
> 
> Thanks Eric.  That surely must be the answer 
> ... at least to part of my current dilemma.
> 
> Ironic that I can write to a drive on the second ide channel 
> even though bios doesn't see it.  But I could not figure out 
> how to get the installation on the second hard drive to boot.

The bios can see it all right w/out necessarily being able to boot from it.
If you look at the IDE devices in your bios, I'm betting that they show up.
That doesn't mean they're all bootable. Older BIOSs may not boot from
anything other than the primary master.

> After installing PCLinuxOS on the second drive and using its 
> installation boot loader, I can no longer boot either XP or 
> Xandros.  I've tried both Grub and Lilo and neither can see it
> so I can no longer boot either XP or Xandros. 

I don't know how PCLinux's installation process works, so I can't say for
sure. You should attempt to install Grub (I wouldn't use Lilo, as there's
nothing it can do that Grub can't) on the MBR of your XP/Xandros drive. You
can then edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file of your Xandros system to point
to the 2nd drive for PCLinux, allowing you to boot whatever you'd like.
There's no reason that I know of that it can't be made to do what you want.
You'll probably need to edit your menu.lst file to get it working though.

> Guess I'll have to forgo the Xandros installation that was on 
> the second partition of the first drive.  So, I am now moving 
> (copying) some key files from that Xandros install to the 
> second drive and I'll try to install PCLinuxOS on the second 
> partition of the first IDE channel and hope that will make 
> one or the other of the boot loaders work. 
> 
> Very frustrating. 
> 

I hope you haven't clobbered your Xandros partition yet. There is a way to
simply install grub after you've installed PCLinux to get it all working.
There's a recipe for it in the Linux Cookbook by Carla Schroeder (O'Reilly),
which is a highly recommended book. If you still have your partitions
intact, let me know and I'll tell you the commands you need (from the book).

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'