John Grantham wrote:
It all depends on the kernel version you are using and whether it has the modules (drivers) installed. Recent versions of SuSE include a 2.4.x kernel with the drivers for many ACARD UltraATA cards included, so it should work out of the box. Older Linux distros may not support it automatically. I don't know about the VST card, though.
I have an ACARD Big Claw 66 card (also known as the 6260M), which is identical to the Sonnet Tempo 66 UltraATA card (the Sonnet card is made by ACARD). It works just fine, and yes, I boot off of it. The only caveat is that you need to make sure to get the latest ROM update from ACARD or Sonnet and install it *before* using the card with Linux. That solves a lot of problems with the card.
The drive shows up as an IDE drive, not as a SCSI drive. (Under Mac OS, the card does a "fake" SCSI interface, so the OS thinks it's a SCSI drive. Why they do this, I don't know -- it's not as if Mac OS can't deal with IDE...) So if you already have an IDE drive in your Mac, it would be /dev/hdb; otherwise it's /dev/hda.
If Linux is already installed on your Mac, you will have to add your new drive (or more properly, the drive's partitions) to /etc/fstab.
The IDE drive you use should not make any difference, though you should stick to name brands for quality -- IBM, Seagate, Western Digital, Fujitsu and so on.
Hope that helps,
John
Sounds like good news. Thanks! And thanks to Marianne Manz too, who also wrote to advise the firmware update. I'm going with the Acard, since the store couldn't confirm if the VST is the same thing or not. We'll see if it comes with the latest firmware -- seems to be 3.12 according to Sonnet and 3.21 according to Acard...: http://www.sonnettech.com/downloads/adapter_sw.html#temporom http://www.acard.com/eng/support/mac.html And you're right, I'll need a new kernel -- I'm still with a patched 2.2.x which lacks (what seems to be) the relevant driver: http://lxr.linux.no/source/drivers/ide/aec62xx.c http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/hedrick/ My hope is that I'll be able to install a 2.4.x system directly onto the new (IDE) drive, without need to change what's on the old (SCSI) one -- does that sound reasonable? Can I then get BootX to offer the choice of booting from either drive? Again, many thanks for the very helpful answers.