On Thu, 23 Dec 2010, Keith Roberts wrote:
> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> From: Keith Roberts <keith at karsites.net>
> Subject: [CentOS] IT8218 PCI IDE RAID CARD
>
> I have big problems with this card not working on Centos 5.5
>
> If I run Parted Magic (kernel 2.6.32.11) from CD, then the
> IT8212F IDE PCI controller is detected OK, and I can access
> the WD hard drive on the controller, in r/w mode.
>
> Running Centos 5.5 I get lots of I/O errors at boot time,
> and cannot get r/w access to the drive from GParted.
It seems that to get this card to work as a plain non-RAID
controller under Centos 5.5, one has to do an overwrite of
the PCI controller card's BIOS.
It either works in RAID mode, or ATAPI controller mode as a
mass storage controller. There one BIOS upgrade for
programming it as a RAID controller, and another BIOS
upgrade to program the PCI card as an ordinary IDE
controller.
Well I have flashed the BIOS on the ITE8212F PCI controller
card with the ATAPI upgrade, and now it appears to the
Centos 5.5 kernel as a plain PCI IDE controller - 100%
native.
This is just what I needed, as I would like to move all disk
I/O intensive stuff onto a small 40GB drive on this
controller. So the kernel needs to see this drive at boot
time, before the kernel has a chance to load any dynamic
drivers.
Kind Regards and a very Happy Christmas to all,
Keith Roberts
--
In theory, theory and practice are the same;
in practice they are not.
This email was sent from my laptop with Centos 5.5