[Soekris] Installing Debian on a 4501 with HDD on PCI Adapter

[Bill Maas]

Hi Heather,

does the 4501's comBIOS see the the disk? In that case I see no reason
why you couldn't install Debian on a PC i.o. through PXE, and transfer
the disk to the Soekris afterwards.

If not, look into the archives, you'll find many reports about seen/not
seen HDDs, some (by far not all) followed by a solution, like removing
the CF or setting the disk's jumpers to CS.

Bill

On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 14:29 -0800, Heather Lockridge wrote:
> I am having problems doing this.  
> 
> I have a RH 4801 system which I installed on a net4501 system by doing lots of hacking to it so that it runs even though it was built for a different CPU.  I would like a more stable version of linux running -- not that debian is necessarily any better than RH, debian is certainly easier to install on a 4501 by using netboot methods like PXE booting.
> 
> But where I am going here is that I want a version of debian that I can install on a HDD connected to the PCI interface on the 4501 board.  This way I can have a "reference" platform which I can easily keep updated and then periodically burn new flash images from it for the CF cards I would like to use.
> 
> I think I am not very good with the hardware parts of this however.
> 
> I did get debian installed directly into a CF card plugged into the CF slot on the 4501.  So, I then got a 3.3 v PCI IDE adapter card and plugged that into the 4501.  Then I took a 10 GB hdd and connected it to the IDE interface on the 4501, but supplied power to the HDD from an old PC.  A friend had me connect the grounding pads on the two boards, PC and net4501 together to avoid grounding issues.
> 
> But, when I boot the debian installer via PXE and tftpboot, the installer does not see the HDD.  I have the HDD set to MASTER. It doesn't seem to matter if it is set for Master or slave.  It still is not seen.
> 
> If anyone can offer some suggestions which would help me here I would be grateful.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Heather
> 
> 
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