Steve Jacobs wrote:
I've purchased a pair of SATA (SATA 3Gb/s, actually) hard drives, with plans to build a SUSE 10 server around them.
Last week I bought a Siig SATA II-150 PCI controller card to use with them. I clearly recall verifying Linux-compatibility before buying the card, but that now seems to be a complete hallucination. As of last night, I find no reference anywhere online that indicates I can use this controller card with Linux.
I can find no linux driver for the card. I've emailed Siig, as well as Initio (the chipset manufacturer), and neither has plans for a linux driver.
At this point I'm assuming that's $40 down the drain, but thought I'd see if anybody here could offer any possibility for this card I haven't considered.
A) Maybe I've missed an online resource somewhere, and there is in fact a driver that will work with this card? While Suse is my first choice, I'm not opposed to using a different distro if necessary.
B) I have absolutely no idea how easy or difficult it is to write a device driver, especially if the hardware/API isn't publically documented. Is there a particular group of coders that take up 'wish-list' requests like this? (I assume not.)
If I'm somewhat bright, and good at figuring out logic puzzles, but have practically no programming experience, is it ridiculous to consider the possibility of writing a device driver myself? I assume so; I have no idea where to even begin with such a thing.
Wow, that's some serious illusion! If you are willing to throw probably hundreds of hours of work into such a project in order to rescue $40 of bad investment without any realistic prospect of a return I advise you not to work for anyone that might ask you how effective you organize your resources!! In order to write a driver you need a lot of knowledge which you yourself profess not to have. My advice is to get your priorities straight. $40 might annoy you but that is a cheap lesson compared to many frustrating hours working on a project that will probably never see the light of success. Much more effective just to ask the listmembers what kind of controller they are using with what capabilities and what problems they encountered. I advise you to first write down the list of requirements the server has to fulfill. If you don't know all the requirements you might try to find out by asking the list what is necessary for a server with x users and y services, backup, reliability etc. Sandy -- List replies only please! Please address PMs to: news-reply2 (@) japantest (.) homelinux (.) com