I had the same problem with Dell Vostro 200.  The drive is PHLIPS DVD-ROM DROM6316.  I checked the bios setting.  It is "IDE".
 
When I installed SL5.1 or Fedora 8, it got stuck at "loading ata_piix driver".  Later, it cannot recognize my cdrom any more.
 
Yonggang
 

________________________________

From: [log in to unmask] on behalf of Mark Stodola
Sent: Fri 4/25/2008 2:36 PM
To: rsoares
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Replacing Vista with Scientific Linux



Check the bios settings.  That is an SATA drive, you may need to enable
legacy support to get things working.  I had problems with an IDE
chipset on the new G33 intel boards I got recently.  The solution was to
buy SATA drives (samsung actually, same brand as you), and set the bios
to treat them as legacy/ide emulated.  It has nothing to do with the
drive itself, but rather EIDE/SATA controller chipsets.

Hope that helps,
Mark

rsoares wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Still having problems getting installer to get past the "cannot find
> needed device" part.  Some hunting with (Crtl-Alt-F4) and
> (Crtl-Alt-F3) tells me that no CDrom has been found.  How do I find
> out what driver(s) the installer uses for the cdrom drive so it can
> proceed?
> I suspect they don't yet support my new drive, which is:
> TSSTcorp CDDVDW TS-H653N  cdrom/dvd
>
> Previous successful installations were on machines with these CDroms:
> 1. SONY CDRWDVD CRX310EE
> 2. TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H652M
>
> The TSSTcorp manufacturer hasn't responded to my request for a Linux
> driver and haven't found any on the web yet.  Also I don't known how
> to find it on the SL install disks.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> Sincerely,
> R.Soares
>


--
Mr. Mark V. Stodola
Digital Systems Engineer

National Electrostatics Corp.
P.O. Box 620310
Middleton, WI 53562-0310 USA
Phone: (608) 831-7600
Fax: (608) 831-9591