abit BE6-II motherboard - installation probs

[garfield]

Hello there,
I wonder if anyone can help me...
I`ve been trying to install Mandrake 7.2 for some time, but there seems to be a problem w/h recognizing my hd.
My hardware config is as follows:
ABIT BE6-II motherboard - HPT366 chipset,
Western Digital Caviar 6.4Gig under UDMA66 mode (mounts as /dev/hde under my current installation w/ch is SuSE 6.4)Intel Celeron 500 , not o/c,128Meg RAM,Lite-On CDROM ATA33.
I had no problems installing SuSE6.4 distro, but neither Gentus (developped for ABIT motherboards!), nor RedHat6.1 and not even the new Mandrake7.2 seems to `see` the hd properly.
While booting, it finds WDC64AA on hde and partition check is all right (!), but on `harddrive detection` it gets locked up.
I tried compiling 2.2.14 Kernel w/ch is used by SuSE6.4 and booting w/h this, but I never got any further.
What shall I do?
Thanks!

[FoBoT]

just a wild guess, but maybe it has something to do with the UDMA66 ide controller, maybe those other distro's don't support 66 out of the box? try checking the web sites for hardware compatibility

[garfield]

Originally posted by FoBoT:
just a wild guess, but maybe it has something to do with the UDMA66 ide controller, maybe those other distro's don't support 66 out of the box? try checking the web sites for hardware compatibility

No, at least Mandrake 7.2 does support UDMA66.
The problem probably is, that my hd is on the main IDE controller
(it mounts as hde) - but nobody knows how to fix this.
Anyway thanks for answering.

[Choozo]

I had similar problems with my BE6-II board too, and suspect that the last BIOS upgrade I applied fsck'ed something up. That was the BIOS named: BEPUJ (09/05/2000).
Mandrake 7.2 just locked up on install. 7.1 would install fine, but there I had problems with sudden and unpredictable system reboots :mad:

Check what version of BIOS you are running, and maybe a 'downgrade' of that one helps?

My 'solution' was simply to throw out the BE6-II board (along with the Celeron), and replace it with the great (so far) Abit KT7-RAID (and a Duron 700) :cool:

[ScRapZ_1]

Its the BIOS... the "out-of-the-box" version has so many bugs that directly affect linux its not funny (maybe Mr. Gates has had a word with ABit?) in particualr an incorrect memory reading to the kernel (mine for example read back that I had 19Mb of memory instead of the 192Mb I had.......)

Flash the BIOS with the latest version and that should fix it, fixed mine, untill I got a new motherboard anyway, not a problem since...

TTFN,
ScRapZ_1 :P

[garfield]

Originally posted by ScRapZ_1:
Its the BIOS... the "out-of-the-box" version has so many bugs that directly affect linux its not funny (maybe Mr. Gates has had a word with ABit?) in particualr an incorrect memory reading to the kernel (mine for example read back that I had 19Mb of memory instead of the 192Mb I had.......)

Flash the BIOS with the latest version and that should fix it, fixed mine, untill I got a new motherboard anyway, not a problem since...

TTFN,
ScRapZ_1 :P

Which version is it? Where did you get it?
Hope it helps...But anyway, why is Suse6.4 OK?
Thanks. garfieldthecat

[Choozo]

Why some distros seemed OK is just pure luck I guess ..... anyway, get the BIOS from here:http://www.abit.nl/english/
Look under the 'Download' section.