[plug] new kernels don't like scsi controller

[Gavin Chester]

I have wrestled with installing the latest kernels on my workstation for
a couple of days until finally pinning the issue down to the LSI u320
pci-x dual-channel scsi controller. 

Not sure how much detail to give without getting writer's cramp and
boring you all to tears, versus being obscure about the cause. Suffice
to say, perhaps, that this controller worked fine within this PC system
using FC5 and opensuse10.1 until a power surge caused it to bork some
months ago. I'm now replacing bad components and have been trying to
reinstall with an upgrade to opensuse10.3. 

The first few times os install failed I tried alternative distros in the
form of the latest ubuntu, kubuntu, xubuntu (I know they're basically
the same), centos 5, et al. None of these worked, they would jsut freeze
before getting too far into the install. Opensuse10.3 was the most
informative, showing that it was failing jsut after hardware detection
and hald had started. The message on the console was "starting syslogd
(logging to /dev/tty4) ..." and there it sat forever. Common with all
distros at this point was that the keyboard had failed, too (though
active up to this point).

Thinking maybe the nVidia FX1000 pci-e card was a problem, I swapped in
an older pci graphics card, but same fault. It was only when I removed
the lsi pci-x u320 scsi card and replaced it with an older adaptec pci
u160 card that the system continued into allowing os install. Weird. The
lsi card had worked with older distros/kernels.

What I'm hoping from you good people is some leads as to why this might
be happening, and confirmation that swapping back in the lsi scsi card
after os install will work.

BTW: I flashed the mb bios but made no difference

Gavin.