To make sure that there was no hardware problem.  I kept the hardware the 
same and loaded SUSE 9.1 on to the system.   I worked.   I looked at the 
hardware and drivers from SUSE and it recognized both disks.   I could not 
find the version of the SATA driver they were using.

I then tried to load SL 5.3 on this hardware set and it halts at the same 
place.  When you boot the sytstem you have to press F12 to get to startup 
minue and select the DVD startup.   It does not happen automatically as with 
other hardware suites.  I double checked the check sum on the down load and 
it passed.
I have to assume that SL 5.3 has a broken SATA driver or ?
Is there anyway to set up a debug for the installation.   Since it happens 
very early in the install it may not be very big file or RAM area.
Any Ideas on how to find the answere.
Larry Linder

On Friday 10 July 2009 09:46, you wrote:
> Larry Linder wrote:
> > System:  small ATA board manufactured by GIGABIT K8 Trinitron.
> > This system currently runs SUSE 9.1 64 bit.
> > It has two disks one 250G that I use for /
> > and the other is a 500G SATA that is partitioned /engr
> >
> > I disconnected the OS disk SATA 1 and installed a new blank disk. Booted
> > with a DVD containing SL 5.3 (dvd checked good)  It get so far into the
> >
> > installation - disk support - and it hangs up with no error message just
> >
> > dies in its tracks.
> >
> > The SL 5.3 installs fine on a large SCSI system, there is something wrong
> >
> > with the SATA driver - contained in SL 5.3
> >
> > Any way to determine what the failure is and is there a patch?
> >
> > Larry Linder
>
> Hi Larry,
> Unlike IDE, SATA hardware is constantly being updated and changed, but
> if SUSE 9.1 ran on it, then it is quite strange that SL 5.3 wouldn't
> recognize it.
> When you go into the BIOS, does it see the drives?
> And what are the BIOS SATA drive settings?
>
> Troy