Can't use PCI IDE?

[chwilliam]

I recently bought an AEC-6880 to work arround the failing IDE controller on my ASUS P4P800. Now the harddrive I installed OSX86 on is located on that card, and Darwin will start to load from it. The problem is that I quickly get the "Still Waiting for root device" message as booting progresses. It runs fine when it is on the IDE controller, but I have to deal with the slim chance of the mobo starting the IDE devices.

 

Info on Mobo: When I started using this computer, I only had an SATA Harddrive and a CD-RW drive, which I had on IDE1. I later got a DVD-RW drive and a seccond hard drive(The one OSX is on now), and found that IDE2 didn't work, but I was already far out of the RMA period. At some point, the IDE stopped being overly reliable. It has started to randomly not boot the devices attached to it. It now has a tendantcy to work perfectly for a while, and then start randomly not booting up the hard drive(Which usually leads to hours of assuming something catastrophic had happened). It usually starts when something would happen to the computer, like if it was off for a long period of time or I added some hardware. To the best of my knowlege, IDE2 never worked(Nothing would respond when plugged into it), and IDE1 is becomming more and more unreliable.

 

Is there some way to fix this? Can I send it in for a new one?

 

So I have several questions:

Are there any Darwin drivers that can fix this problem?

Is there a comparably priced PCI IDE controller that works?

Is there any known way to fix the IDE controller on the mobo?

Is ASUS in any way known to be generous on their warranties(Mobo is nearly 2 years old)?

[Kanji_Man]

Sorry to hear you are having so much trouble but as far as I know there are very few pci add-on cards that are supported by OSx86. I personally have an onboard Paradise Controller and an add-on Silicon Image based controller that are not recognized by OSx86. My advice would be to either search this forum and find a card that works or to concentrate your efforts on correcting the problem with your onboard controller. I've fixes "flakey" onboard controllers befoer by flashing the motherboard's BIOS you may wish to try that. You might also want to make sure you have an 80 conductor UDMA cable and not an old generic ribbon cable. Good luck.