Adaptec's ATA RAID 1200A for just IDE interface; (Re: Promise's PCI DMA ATA...)

  I have reported that the Promise's PCI (Ultra66 or Ultra100 ) 
DMA ATA interface cards using promise's chip has trouble with 
the current IA-64 machine with RH7.2 when both IDE channels are used.

  I have tried many other cards, some are not usable because
the OS did not go to the boot loader, or kernel did not up
with the 4GB of memory, etc.

  I found the Adaptec's RAID card "ATA RAID 1200A" which uses
the HighPoint's HPT370A as the chip can be used well without
trouble. I connected four IDE HDD drives using two IDE cables
(/dev/hde, /dev/hdf, /dev/hdg, /dev/hdh), using no RAID function 
of this card but used it just as the UDMA IDE card. 

  The reads/writes simultaneously for 24 hours did not drop the kernel. 
Making the software RAID using the Redhat7.2's mkraid and raidstart
with RAID level 0 or 5 did work fine by many read/write tests.

I think other cards with HPT370A chip could be used as well.

The promise's proprietary chip has some difficulty with RH7.2-IA64
if the both IDE channel is used. For promise chip card using only
its primary-master and primary-slave is safe is found. The reason
is unknown.

H.M.