Very Computer

I have a VLB IDE I/O card that will support two strings of IDE drives (it
has two interfaces), with the second string being able to be assinged an
inturrupt and stuff similiar to as if you dropped in a second card.

Is it possible to use a 3rd and fourth IDE drive (assuming no inturrupt
conflict)?  If so, what patches or kernels are needed (I'm running 1.1.13
with the IDE Performance patch)?  I haven't upgraded to a kernel >1.1.13
yet because I haven't had the need to, but that is a simple (in theory)
enough procedure.  NOTE:  This system DOES NOT have DOS installed on it,
so solutions cannot require DOS.

If relevant, the is the other equipment on the system:
        2 Caviar 420MB IDE Drives
        Colorado Floppy Tape
        SB16 MCD w/ Mitsumi 2x CDRom
        486-66 w/ 16MB (AMI BIOS)
        NE2k Ethernet

Thanks for your time.

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The above represents my personal opinions and not necessarily those
of my employer, Qualcomm Inc.

: Is it possible to use a 3rd and fourth IDE drive (assuming no inturrupt
: conflict)?  If so, what patches or kernels are needed (I'm running 1.1.13
: with the IDE Performance patch)?  I haven't upgraded to a kernel >1.1.13

Well, I use a second IDE controller with kernel 1.1.23, which
patched cleanly with:

/pub/Linux/kernel/patches/diskdrives/atdisk2-ide2.diff.gz

from sunsite.unc.edu.

As far as I can tell, this should work for you too.
--

-Chris May, Computer Science, University of MA, Amherst
-       Technical Assistant, P.C. Maintenance Lab

Quote:>This has been batted around a few times by others, but I haven't really
>seen a difinitive answer yet to this question and thought I'd try.
>I have a VLB IDE I/O card that will support two strings of IDE drives (it
>has two interfaces), with the second string being able to be assinged an
>inturrupt and stuff similiar to as if you dropped in a second card.
>Is it possible to use a 3rd and fourth IDE drive (assuming no inturrupt
>conflict)?  If so, what patches or kernels are needed (I'm running 1.1.13
>with the IDE Performance patch)?  I haven't upgraded to a kernel >1.1.13
>yet because I haven't had the need to, but that is a simple (in theory)
>enough procedure.  NOTE:  This system DOES NOT have DOS installed on it,
>so solutions cannot require DOS.

Actually, you could have more than 4 IDE/AT drives in your system.  All you
have to do is add more controllers and hack them so they use unique I/O
addresses and IRQs (if you don't mind cutting traces...).  By looking at the
mods that atdisk2 does to the hd.c driver, it should be relatively easy to add
a hd2.c etc. for more drives.

Of course this is only useful if you happen to have the hardware lying around
(as I did).  A SCSI bus or bigger drives would certainly be better bang for
the buck if you actually have to buy hardware.