[NTLUG:Discuss] Help with Promise FastTrak Tx2000

[Daniel Hauck]

To tell a little story:

Long ago, I bought a Promise RAID card... used it with Windows but later 
wanted to try it with Linux.  There were Linux drivers but only for specific 
kernels.  I begged Promise for driver source so I could compile for any 
kernel but they refused.

Quite some time later, maybe mroe than a year, I bought a $6 card from 
CompUSA for adding mroe IDE drives to my system.  I thought to myself, "This 
Maxtor drive controller board looks familiar..."  Then it hit me!!  The 
board was IDENTICAL to the Promise card I had in the same machine!!!!  
Chip-for-chip each chip in the same place... the same PC board.  The only 
difference?  The contents of the ROM chip.  That's it, nothing more.  Then I 
scanned my devices and sure enough, the Promise card was detected as two IDE 
controllers.  From that point on, I will forever doubt the prowess of 
Promise... they are software, not hardware.  They suck!


>From: "gan hawk" <ganhawk1 at hotmail.com>
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>Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] Help with Promise FastTrak Tx2000
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>
>Hi,
>
>Yes RAID 5 would be nice but then I would have to add 2 more drives.  Also 
>the only reason I am making a raid is for failover. The box is a server and 
>it serves its purpose well so I dont want to add more hardware to it.
>
>I am surprised Promise uses software for its RAID stuff. I thought thats 
>what the PDC chip onboard was supposed to do!
>
>Ganesh
>
>>
>>The problem is that Promise uses software for its RAID stuff.  Yes, the 
>>onboard BIOS supports RAID constructions and maintenance activities, but 
>>when the OS is running, it's all software.
>>
>>Ultimately, what you have, as far as Linux is concerned, is two IDE drives 
>>and two IDE controllers.  Use Linux's own software RAID solutions for 
>>that.  As for booting?  Eh... that's a good question.
>>
>>the nice thing about the Linux software approach is that you can use those 
>>two added IDE controllers and the ones on your system board to make a nice 
>>little RAID5 solution which is much better.  Think on that a bit.
>>
>>
>>>From: "gan hawk" <ganhawk1 at hotmail.com>
>>>Reply-To: NTLUG Discussion List <discuss at ntlug.org>
>>>To: discuss at ntlug.org
>>>Subject: [NTLUG:Discuss] Help with Promise FastTrak Tx2000
>>>Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:33:09 -0600
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>>>Hello,
>>>
>>>I want to make a bootable RAID 1 array with promise FastTrak TX 2000. I 
>>>installed the card on the computer (an old one which has no special 
>>>features in the BIOS for booting from RAID card) and installed the 
>>>drivers as a module which gets loaded at boot. But when I tried to boot 
>>>the machine, it perceives each disk attached to the card as 2 separate 
>>>IDE drives! I can access /dev/hde and /dev/hdg separately and even that 
>>>is very slow and dmesg shows lost interrupts.
>>>I cannot access the drives as /dev/sda (Promise website tells me that the 
>>>RAID will be detected as IDE instead of SCSI and that is normal)
>>>
>>>The kernel has has the following option in the grub:
>>>ide0=0x1f0,0x3f6,14 ide1=0x170,0x376,15 ide2=0 ide3=0 ide4=0 ide5=0 
>>>ide6=0 ide7=0 ide8=0 ide9=0    noapic
>>>
>>>I am trying to install this on a redhat 9 system (2.4.20-8)
>>>Does anyone else have the same problem or someone got TX2000 working 
>>>successfully as a bootable RAID ?
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>Ganesh
>>>
>>>_________________________________________________________________
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>>>
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>>>https://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
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