Very Computer

Would someone give me some advice on how to get a DTC2278D controller
to be recognized by Linux?

I've the above controller in a Gateway 486-DX266V on which I've
installed the slackware distribution of Linux 1.2.13.  The primary IDE
interface on the card is recognized with no problem, but I can't get
the secondary inteface going.  On the primary, I've got a Caviar 1.6GB
and a Caviar 540MB.  On the secondary IDE interface is an Acer 6X CD
ROM drive which Linux can't find because it doesn't see that
interface.  It is on IRQ 15.  

The stupid thing is recognized by DOS and {Ghu help me} Win 95.
According to what I've been reading Linux has native support for this,
but I can't figure it out.  According to the HOWTO files on Sunsite, I
needed to add 'hd=dtc2278' as an additional parameter to the boot
process, but that doesn't seem to work.

I would appreciate any help that could be provided in this endeavor.
I'm probably not providing enough information, but I'm not really sure
what is relevant.  Thanks in advance.  If you could e-mail responses

The "device=...   " line in your config.sys also is what turns on the
second port on the card.  The port will stay on through a warm boot,
or power on hard reset, but not through cold reset.  My work around
has been to use a method of boot from floppy, Pushing the relevant key
(F8) to do line by line confirmation, then pressing CTR-ALT-DEL with
either no diskette or different diskette in drive A.  No diskette to
boot from Hard disk.
Good luck Mike

I know it's not considered good form to followup your own posts, but I
did want to let people know I solved my own problem.  I didn't want
anyone doing research for nothing.  The solution was a matter of
jumpering the CD drive as a Master on the secondary IDE interface.
What threw me off was the documentation for IDE hardware.  Every doc
I've read on IDE hardware said if there is a single drive on the
interface it shouldn't have a jumper.  Without the jumper, however,
Linux doesn't recognize the drive.  Maybe someone would like to
comment on this.

I'm reading _Using Linux_ (QUE) now and enjoying myself immensely
installing and configuring Linux.  I look forward to playing with the
source code and solving a minor problem with the PAS-16 interface
problem.

I know it's not considered good form to followup your own posts, but I
did want to let people know I solved my own problem.  I didn't want
anyone doing research for nothing.  The solution was a matter of
jumpering the CD drive as a Master on the secondary IDE interface.
What threw me off was the documentation for IDE hardware.  Every doc
I've read on IDE hardware said if there is a single drive on the
interface it shouldn't have a jumper.  Without the jumper, however,
Linux doesn't recognize the drive.  Maybe someone would like to
comment on this.

I'm reading _Using Linux_ (QUE) now and enjoying myself immensely
installing and configuring Linux.  I look forward to playing with the
source code and solving a minor problem with the PAS-16 interface
problem.

I have the same card.  To get the 2nd ide port to work (IRQ 15) you can
give lilo (or loadlin) the hd=dtc2278 option on the append line.  My
append line looks like this.

append="hd=2848,16,63 hd=1001,15,17 hd=cdrom hd=dtc2278 ..."

This tells linux that the first two drives are hard drives with the
above first two paramaters.  The third parameter tells linux that my
third port (master on second ide port or hdc) is a CD ROM.  The last
parameter tells the kernal to initialize the second port on the dtc2278D
card.  Everything has worked great once I put in these options.  I
can't remember what version of the kernel supports it but I think it
has been supported for a while.  You will have to set up yours according
to your setup of course.