User Feedback :: DSL 2.1b and the i865 chipset

Hi,

I love DSL, it is one of my most useful tool. Until recently, I stayed with an older version (1.9) because 2.0 wouldn't boot on my PC. I have a plain Asus P4P800 motherboard with both IDE and SATA HDs.

Now, DSL 2.1b boots fine but I cannot see my SATA drive, as I did before. This has been tested with the Syslinux 2.1b version of DSL.

BTW, I like the new changes in the interface. The status applets looked better before but now more information is available at a glance.

Keep up the good work!

Did you try using the regular isolinux version?

Found it! I didn't noticed that you can now start DSL with the SATA cheatcode. It worked with the isolinux version. Now, I will try it with the SysLinux... I wonder why SATA support is now disabled by default.

It is disabled for 2 reasons:

1) We were unsure if automatic SATA driver loading will cause problems for some computer systems.

2) The driver loading process takes a very small but noticable amount of extra boot time (maybe a sec or two, depending on the speed of the computer). So to keep the bootup times short (especially on older hardware), this was made into an optional boot feature.

At this point, there have been no problems reported with the drivers so it may be possible in the future to make the SATA driver loaded automatically and instead only DISABLE it when needed via cheatcode "nosata". Similar to "nousb" "noagp" etc.

I enabled SATA to be default and run into boot problems on an old P-III with a Via chipset. It hanged just at the start, before even showing the penguin. Disabling SATA solved the problem. Enabling it only when necessary is fine with me. As long as I can access my SATA drives on my own PC, I can't ask for more.

Keep up the good work and thanks for the support!

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