Installing XP/Linux from SATA optical drive?

[Skaven]

Just setup a new computer for a lab at school:

Asus A8N SLI Deluxe
AMD 64 4000+
512x4 PC3200
eVGA 6800 Ultra
2x250gb SATA (not RAID)
Plextor SATA 716SA DVDRW

Got it up and running - just flashed the BIOS. The XP installation CD that we use at the university is a site license and they do NOT have a bootable CD. I had to create the 6! floppy disks last time I installed XP on a machine - not pretty. I'm thinking that booting from a floppy isn't going to work because it won't detect the SATA optical drive? Or will I just have to F6 and install the SATA drivers while booting off of the floppies?

As for Linux - tried to boot off of the Redhat Enterprise Linux WS CDs that we have here at the office. It seemed to boot off of the CD without any incident... it even loaded the sata_nv drivers - but when I pointed it to the optical SATA drive for install media, it couldn't find it. Any suggestions??

The plan is to install XP on one of the 250gb drives and REL on the other. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Nothinman]

I don't think SATA ATAPI is enabled by default yet and depending on the version of RHWS you're using, they might still be using a 2.4 kernel so I really wouldn't expect it to work. You should probably just get a cheapo PATA drive for installation, it'll save you a lot of hassle.