suse 7.1 and highpoint 370 ata-100 raid controller

i cant get suse 7.1 to boot to start the install on a machine with the above raid controller. tried booting from cdrom, floppy, nothing works. got suse7.1 image from highpoint website that is supposed to work and it does the same thing. i get to the blue screen with the suse address and everything, but never get a boot prompt. this also happens with 7.0 and 6.3. redhat will boot up fine and i can start the install but i would much rather have suse on here. any ideas what is going on?