Hullo out there! This is my first post ever on notebookforums.com, hope I get all the help I can from all the very smart people out here!

Just received my Sager-9880C; have got everything working perfectly using MCE 2005.

Wanted to install Red Hat Linux 9.0, but ran into some problems, all of which are so far related to the fact that the SATA hard drive requires some more than usual configuration.

However, even before I go into the details of the troubles I'm facing, I have two things to say to all who are considerate enough to try n help me:
(a) First, kindly do not waste forum space by asking me to simply switch to another linux distribution; that's not what I want to do. Sure, Red Hat 9 is primitive by today's standards, with a 2.4.x kernel and loads of manual configuration to be done to sustain today's hardware BUT "that's exactly the point!". I think part of the spirit of using Linux is to try n overcome such obstacles n thus enhance learnig, rather than shying away from the problem n resorting to an alternative distro with everything jam packed into it; at length, call me prejudiced, but I'm all bent upon getting RH9 up n running on my laptop...n I know that using some advice I hope to gather here, it can be done!
(b)Secondaly, I want to confirm right now and as it is, that I'm not myself resorting to a "no-effort" solution by looking out for a pre-cooked and ready to serve solution; I've spent quite a considerable time searching on the net, experimenting with my system, thinking about alternatives and of course, scouring the relevant forums (linuxquestions.org, notebookforums.com, experts-exchange.com, etc). So, if I say that something isn't working the way its supposed to, then that really is the way it is...

After this anti-disclaimer, and armed with the three Red Hat 9 installation CDs, here I go...

I cold boot from the first installation CD to get the "boot:" prompt and just hit enter...a few copyright notices and hardware detection messages scroll by...when I'm suddenly left with a "no hard-drive detected" message. That's alright, I guess coz I received pretty much the same message when trying to install MCE 2005; I had to provide Promise Fastrack 378 SATA drivers using a floppy to the MCE installation so there must be drivers like these for Linux too...so I wonder,"What exactly is the name of the SATA controller for which drivers are required?"

Sounds easy...if Windows XP setup ( henceforth and onwards, I'll be referring to the MCE 2005 installation as Windows XP setup ) worked fine using "Promise Fastrack SATA 378 Controller Driver", then that must be it; except that when I power up my laptop, during the BIOS detection screen, a message appears indicating "Promise Sata 378 - TX2 Plus". Not very different sounding names, I know, but could have made all the difference. So well, anyway, I take notice of the suffix in the latter case and fire up my browser to http://www.promise.com/index_eng.asp ; the site of the SATA controller's manufacturer.

In their website's support section, the "product fast finder" doesn't mention anything conspicuously close to "Promise SATA 378 - TX2 Plus" ( though many controllers have the TX-2 suffix ) and on performing a search within their site for the same, no results are yielded.

So I fire up google and perform a little search; the most appropriate result seemed to be the following: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=258564

The post says,"go to the Promise website, choose Promise SATA-RAID-Controller (TX-4000) from the products and choose your distro.
download the archive, it is suitable for the following controllers:
FastTrak S150 TX4 or
FastTrak S150 TX2plus or
FastTrak 376 or
FastTrak 378 or
FastTrak TX4000"

Well, sure as hell, FastTrack 378 makes an appearance n over that, the Linux Drivers on the site are specifically for Red Hat 9 . So I download the driver and go through the readme.

The downloaded file basically consists of drivers that are to be fed to the Red Hat installer, so I copy all the files to a floppy and fire up the installation again, by cold booting from the RH9 Install CD 1.
At the boot: prompt I type 'expert' and after a little while I'm offered to use a 3rd-party driver diskette.At this point, I insert the floppy into the USB floppy drive.The installation program asks me from where the diskette is to be read.OPTIONS:
sda OR hda.Choosing hda doesn't yield any result so I choose sda this time, after which the installer starts some activity, indicating reading of the disk...after about five minutes, sure enough, the graphical installer of Red Hat is launched....I choose my language -> choose custom installation.
The next step is to partition the hard drive; I choose the manually partion ( use Disk Druid ) option.
Here's where the trouble starts: THE ONLY DEVICE DISK DRUID INDICATES IS AVAILABLE FOR PARTIONING, IS sda, which of course, refers to the USB floppy.Unable to move on anymore, I quit the installation.

So, what do I do now?
Another thing, according to the sata driver installation notes, I have to ctrl-alt-f2 and give some commands e.g. unmount /tmp/fd0 however, with the usb floppy drive, I assume, things will be a little different...what do I do?

Help!
Thanx,
Shubham Harnal