Root Device Problems Intel D945GNT SATA Drive

[crazed]

I am sitting at work and sort of obsessing with my OSX install attempt last night. So I decided to be a bit proactive and try the forum for some insight today. I appreciate any insight you may be able to give me.

 

My setup:

MB: Intel D945GNT

HDD: Seagate 250 IDE drive I want OSX on (SATA 0), Seagate 400 SATA w/Windows XP (SATA 1), Samsung 250 (SATA 2)

Obviously I have IDE to SATA cards on the IDE HDD: ST-101L IDE UDMA/133 to Serial ATA Converter Adapter from tekgems.com

CPU: Pentium D 2.8 Prescott

Optical drives (on IDE port): Pioneer DVR-110 (Master), Plextor PX-740A (Slave)

 

Install DVD: Latest jas 10.4.8 release AMD, SSE2, SSE3 patched with released ppf file.

 

I am getting the “still waiting for boot device” error when trying to boot from the install DVD.

 

Extra info: I have a big enough Fat32 partition on the Seagate 250 to install to. The IDE to SATA cards are working perfectly in Windows XP and I haven't had any issues writing or reading from the drives whilst in XP.

 

So, obvious questions…

 

If you were me, how would you set up the drives? Should I put the drive I want to install OSX on the IDE controller and use the slave drive to install? Could I then move this drive to the SATA 0 spot and be able to boot?

 

Should I keep the current setup and attempt to install onto the drive via VMware?

 

Are there any BIOS settings I should be investigating?

 

I know I can make this work; I did quite a bit of digging around on the board last night, but couldn’t seem to find some basic answers.

 

I also have a PCI IDE Silicon Image card lying around if SATA isn’t going to cut it, and could attach the drive to the card that way, too.

 

And if I am too vague on some of the hardware, let me know. I can supply more details when I get home. I can take a picture of the startup errors when I get home if that would help, too.

 

Thanks, people...