Promise Supertrak66 raid Controller

[nastygnat]

Hello Everyone,

Based on information I found in some linux threads, I've gone and purchased the card mentioned in the subject.

I've had nothing but a headache with this card so far. Promise acts like they don't have any desire to support anything except redhat. Their drivers for this card are non-existant and the Supertrak100 drivers are for RH7.1, which is just not acceptable

The reason I'm bringing this here is I want to know if anyone out there is using this card? I found the thread again in the linux kernel archives and Alan Cox himself appears to be using this card. Thats what made me realise the stock kernels with SuSe and RH weren't going to have the support I required. I've managed to get the latest RH and I intend to apply the -ac patches to it to see if that makes it work. But prior to this, and over the past few months I've kept hearing nothing but good things about gentoo. Today I noticed Gentoo has a kernel thread based on the Alan Cox kernel.

I think I've finally found a good reason to give gentoo a try!! Is there anyone out there that can give me some encouragement on this issue? I'm REALLY hoping someone is already doing what I want to do and might give me some guidance.

My biggest "fears" about gentoo are the compile time and the download time. I'm not even going to try this at home from my isdn connection. Broadband doesn't exists where I live, even though I'm only a few miles from the end of the cable line where it does exist

Can anyone give me a heads up on what kind of install time I might be looking at on a PII400 w/ 384 MB ECC Ram and a 9.1 GB SCSI HDD?

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!
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Kevin White, Linux+, A+

[taskara]

[nastygnat]

Well, Thats not the only reason I've wanted to test gentoo

Anyhow, I think I'm going to get a new card anyway. This card is not the same as the software based fasttrak series and I'm afraid that those modules will not work. Everything I've seen relates to the module i2o_pci, which does try to initialize the card under every distro I've tried. Then it fails to reset and up until RH8 it totally locked the kernel.

That said, I'll wait till I get a good card (adaptec 2400, uses the dpt_? modules) and has been tested and reviewed on several different sites. Cost was a factor when I got the promise card and I can say I got what I paid for.

In the mean time, I'm gonna get vmware fired up so I can run through a few test installs to see exactly what I'm dealing with. If gentoo lives up to what I've heard, then I may have a new addiction
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Kevin White, Linux+, A+