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Debian Etch snapshot doesn't recognize NEC ND-3550A DVD Drive

O

OSX

Senior member
The drive is a standard IDE DVD-RW. It's hooked up to the IDE channel on an Intel DP965LT motherboard, which is an i965 express.
 
Well you using 'SATA' for the harddrive or using the harddrive on a different IDE controller?
(I am assuming that you've already have Debian etch installed on this machine...)

Because if so there is a chance that the IDE controller your using isn't supported yet by Linux, or the actual Linux version your using. The i965 stuff is still pretty new.

Lots of times people who make these boards will add on extra chipsets for the ide controllers and such that are not actually part of the onboard chipset. For instance I have intel board, but I think one of the ide controllers is in the northbridge, but the other ide controller is a Marvell chipset (I think).

Do you know what kernel your using?
(to find out open up a terminal and run 'uname -r' command)

Also see if you can find out what exact chipset is being used for that ide controller.

It maybe something as simple as a kernel upgrade will get you working with that controller.
 
The CD drive is on the standard IDE controller, built into the i965 chipset. The installer did not get far enough in where I could see if the SATA drive was recognized, but the installer had the 2.6.17 kernel. Since the i965 is so new, I am downloading Edgy Eft now, since that's a new distro, and should hopefully have support for that. Linux has not been installed yet because of problems with the CD drive.
 
Ok.

I tried looking for a it a bit and it seems that you'll need something with 2.6.18 kernel, but I am not sure.


edit: The edgy eft seems to use 2.6.17 kernel, but it's heavily patched, so it may work out ok.
 
Thank you for helping with that. I shall try the Edgy Eft install later on. If Edgy Eft works out, I'll just compile 2.6.18
 
If you want to still use Debian Etch there are two ways that I know to work around the issue, just a FYI.

Find Linux live cdrom that recognizes the drive, or a USB-based Linux system that can recognize it.
Then use Debootstrap to install Debian from them.
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apds03.html

If you already have a Debain machine you can rebuild the installation image with a updated kernel.
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Modify/CustomKernel

You shouldn't have to compile your own kernel or anything like that. Just use a image from a existing kernel. I don't know if Debian etch has 2.6.18 optionally aviable yet, but you can pull it from unstable if you want.

Although hopefully you won' t have to do that and Edgy will work.
 
Edgy didn't work. Just the same old 'Couldn't find installation media' message, and the CD drive wasn't detected.
 
Well that just sucks. :/

Try out Fedora Core 6. They have 2.6.18 kernel by default, I beleive.

At least that way you can see if it'll detect the stupid drive.
 
Actually.

you know what would be relatively easy to do?

If you have a second computer then install Debian on that computer, upgrade the kernel to 2.6.18 and then move the harddrive over to the new computer. That way the computer will simply detect all the new hardware and configure itself pretty much automaticly.

Even if Grub isn't able to get working 100% then as long as you can get access to the grub command line then you can edit the menu entries to boot the new system.
 
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