Thanks, Ron! The solution was noapic as a kernel parameter though. Mark Allums' shot in the dark held the key. Then I tried to transfer my system from the old 8.6G ide disk to the new 500G sata disk, following instructions you seem to have gotten on another occasion: dd and resize2fs. dd worked, resize2fs failed miserably... So right now I am re-installing the system happily on the 500G sata disk.
Hint for the debian installation disk managers: Took me some time to figure out how to add a boot parameter to the installation kernel on the netinstall CD. Should be easy to include a menu item that gives the standard for the minimum information that has to be entered at the boot prompt: boot: /install.amd/vmlinuz initrd=/install.amd/initrd.gz and leaves a blinking cursor right there to add your own boot option (e.g. noapic...) or press return for normal installation boot (as you would get with the first menu item, install). Just a thought. Would have made my life much easier and saved me one doomed boot to see what install is booting... Not evident that a newbie would have figured this out as a way to get at the information. Thanks again, all you guys! Hope this makes it into the thread for future reference... Best, a happy Kai On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Ron Johnson wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On 07/15/08 00:53, Kai Martens wrote: > > Hi there, > > > > While upgrading to service pack 3 windoze died - so I finally got my wife > > to work on my debian machine. Now I need to install debian on her amd64 > > compaq, and unlike 15 month ago this time I cannot give up. The SATA > > drives are simply not recognized during installation. Threw in an old 8.6G > > ide hard drive that I had salvaged, and installed the system. Below is my > > dmesg output: the trail of the errors is clear, but even after a lot of > > googling I still have no idea as to what the root cause might be. Could > > not make sense of anything I found on the web. The chip is an ATI IXP 400. > > > > The BIOS does not seem to allow me to mess with any drive settings... > > > > :-( > > > > Thanks for your help! > > > > Best, Kai > > > > P.S. Due to the high traffic I am not on the list. Please cc me in your > > reply. - Will deal with the 8139too issue after I got the disk... > > > [snip] > > ata1: EH complete > > ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen > > ata1.00: cmd c8/00:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in > > res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout) > > ata1.00: status: { DRDY } > > ata1: soft resetting link > > ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) > > ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100 > > ata1: EH complete > [snip] > This is the best I could find from Google: > > http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=275504 > > - -- > Ron Johnson, Jr. > Jefferson LA USA > > "Kittens give Morbo gas. In lighter news, the city of New New > York is doomed." > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEARECAAYFAkh8vtgACgkQS9HxQb37XmcxSQCePvRN0tpbkBuoP6f18rg4GaQ4 > 2bUAoOcwVwYTTZeupiG1vEIbQh7X6swI > =oh6p > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kai Martens University of Utah Research Associate Professor Department of Physics Tel: (801) 585-5503 115 South 1400 East Fax: (801) 581-6256 James Fletcher Bldg. Room 201 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Salt Lake City Office: INSCC 216 Utah 84112-0830, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]