Hello

 > We have so far been unable to
> tell what devices have changed between the GX280 and the 620, though
> another part of the university (which runs suse9x) told us that it worked
> for them:
> 
>     "with minor updates to drivers"
> 
> and so far have ignored our requests for info on *which* drivers need
> updating (or give us the list of pci-ids).

Most likely this is the SATA/IDE controller (Intel ICH6/7):

Unfortunately the ahci (Advanced Host Controller Interface) driver in
2.4.21-32.0.1.EL has troubles initializing correctly if the controller
has both SATA (mostl likely disks) and PATA (most likely CDs) connected 
and cannot be set up in BIOS to initialize in Legacy/Combined mode:

in best case SATA channels will initialize correctly and PATA ones will
run without DMA ... in worst ... you get the kernel panic on first write 
access to SATA device ..

So far we have not found a real workaround for that problem...

> 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
> 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FW (ICH6/ICH6W) SATA Controller (rev 03)


.. yes indeed this is ICH6 ...

> 
> However that seems to be the chipset on many of Intel's boards too now 
> (e.g. the D915 systems), so we will just have to wait for the kernel to 
> catch up.

Indeed: for example all recent Centrino laptops seem
to have ICH6 variant (recently we've tested some models
from different manufacturers .. none of these is useable
with SL 30X)

For your information: troubles with ICH6 controllers
have been reported to Red Hat some time ago already..
so there's a hope this will be solved soon.


Jarek
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