[plug] IDE tape drive [solution]

[Matt Kemner]

On 28 Sep 2003, quoth Onno Benschop:

> Two HDD on IDE0 one Tape on IDE1 as Master - second channel is not
> recognised by Linux anymore, even though the BIOS shows all three
> devices.
>
> Now that it works, who needs to know this problem? Is it a BIOS issue,
> is it a Kernel issue - who do I tell?

I'm convinced it's a BIOS issue, since the error message with only the
tape drive plugged in (or nothing at all plugged in) resulted in the
kernel message "neither IDE port enabled (BIOS)"

Having the tape drive plugged into the 1st channel and the HDDs into the
2nd resulted in Linux only seeing ide1 not ide0

The BIOS should not be disabling the IDE channel just because (it thinks)
there is nothing plugged into it.  If the channel wasn't disabled Linux
would have had no trouble finding the tape drive, even if the BIOS
couldn't see it.

Stranger still the BIOS saw the tape drive fine, yet it still saw fit to
report the channel as disabled to Linux.

 - Matt

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