You going to just have Linx or dual boot?

JB~
The end machine will be running Linux - Ubuntu 8.04
I looked around for support articles dealing with the specific card/drivers, and actually found one article where the poster mentioned he had the card and drivers running on Ubuntu 8.04 and they worked well.

Even after getting the system up on IDE and re-installing to a SATA drive,
unless the BIOS sees that card, I'll be in the same place I was when I started...

Hi dieTrennmaschine and welcome to PCHF,

Let's just clear a few things up:

Can you get into the BIOS when the hard drives are in?
Have you tested the hard drives in another PC?
Have you tried with just one hard drive?

Upgrader If I plug in the SATA card and the drives, no joy. The system will not go beyond the DELL splash screen (which I have since turned off in the BIOS so maybe there's a clue there). The drives are both new and I have tried them both - they read/write fine. I have not tried with only one of the SATA drives.

Hey Tren,

You won't be able to see your SATA drives in Dell BIOS. Not familiar with the SATA card your using, nor have I had the opportunity to try a SATA card in a Dell, so I'm not convinced it will work (Dell PC's come with their own BIOS), at least without some sort of boot device present (such as IDE). I've personally found these cards to be fussy at best. Some PC's require a BIOS update for the cards to work. In other PC's, the card will work as an addon, to provide expansion to already installed SATA drives (for example to provide RAID). I've yet to see a configuration where you can actually boot from these expansion cards altough it should not be too different to SCSI.

These cards normally come with their own BIOS utility, which can be accessed shortly after the post screen. Since turning off the DELL spash screen, what is the last thing you see on the screen? Have you tried the card on it's own (without any drives connected), to see if you can at least start from CD-ROM instead (no freeze)? The freezing concerns me.

MM~
I'm trying that now... will update again shortly...

MM -
Without any drives, the card will not interfere with the boot.
I finally had to put an IDE drive back in the machine to get any responses.
I loaded Linux 7.10 server on the box (the only spare cd i had), and it installed ok.

I shutdown the machine, plugged in the two drives, and rebooted.
The boot gets to
SiI3512A SATARaid BIOS 4.3.534
<Press Ctrl-S or F4 to enter RAID utility>
0 ST3500630AS 465GB

and stalls there. It is one of two drives on the card.