I've got access to a Compaq Presario 900 through work, an AMD Athlon-based machine.
I've got around a couple of problems, I have to boot with ide=nodma and nomce according to various web sites. So I can get right to the start of the installation procedure, but both fdisk and cfdisk say "can't open /dev/hda" The drive is an 18 Gb Fujitsu 2.5" drive on an ALI controller, and it is visible in the dmesg output. However, if I reboot from there and let it start the other installed OS then it sais "NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND" It seems that something is shutting down/spinning down the IDE drive or the controller so that a power off is required to reset it. Anyone got any ideas?
