[wellylug] New HDD on old motherboard

[Richard Hector]

Hi all,

I've got a new(ish) 80G drive which my BIOS doesn't recognise.

No problem, I thought - I'll boot off something else, and Linux
shouldn't have a problem. The motherboard _is_ supposed to support udma
- there's options for it in the CMOS setup, which I've left on auto
(only alternative is 'disabled')

So in order to have only udma capable devices on each ide channel (the
second one has my CD burner), I'm booting off a SCSI drive.

Now this all works, after a few differences of opinion with the debian
installer, but there's a problem: dma isn't working at all, and
hdparm -d1 /dev/hda says I'm not allowed to do that.

My guess is that since the BIOS thinks there's nothing attached (it
hangs if I set it to autodetect the drive), it doesn't actually
configure the chipset to UDMA, and I'm left with whatever the default
is.

According to lspci, my chipset is:
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)

So is there an easy way to make the chipset do the right thing? Do I
need to set something special in my kernel? I'm running (so far) the
default 2.6.6ish kernel that's on my Debian sarge CD.

Any tips appreciated - I know the one about ditching the Celeron 366 and
getting something decent, but I'm a little short on cash ATM ... let me
know if you want an '87 Celica.

Thanks,

Richard