Hello all,

I have a working solution with only SATA drives and IDE fully disabled.

I plugged my HDD on SATA1, my 1st PX-712SA on SATA2 and my 2nd PX-712SA on
SATA4. For those tests I did not plug the 2nd HDD to SATA3 but that should
work ok.

In "Integrated Peripherals" I set the options like this:

On-Chip Primary PCI IDE - Disabled
SATA RAID/AHCI Mode - AHCI
On-board H/W GigaRAID - Disabled

After rebooting, in "Standard CMOS Features" I get:

IDE Channel 0 Master [None]
IDE Channel 0 Slave [None]
IDE Channel 2 Master [S_ATA1-Maxtor 6Y080M]
IDE Channel 2 Slave [None]
IDE Channel 3 Master [S_ATA3-PLEXTOR DVDR]
IDE Channel 3 Slave [S_ATA4-PLEXTOR DVDR]

Not sure who'd be IDE1?

I created a chipset diskette from iaa40.exe on the CD. I could not find a
newer version from Giga-Byte or Intel though it seems like there is a 4.1
version of IAA, at least I think I read something like this in a readme.

When I restart, I hit a key to boot from the Windows XP SP1 CD (after the
message is shown). I hit F6 when requested, I select "82801FR AHCI" from the
diskette and successfully complete the installation. The Windows XP Setup
completes very quickly and the system seems to work just fine.

The SATA controller appears as "Intel(R) 82801FR SATA AHCI Controller" under
"IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers".

I tried the same with the LH alpha preview CD, the 1st part of the Setup
worked but I got the BSOD (0x7B) when LH started after the Setup restarted
the system. I'd think that it is due to a possible lack of native SATA
support in this alpha of LH. We will see with the upcoming preview.

This configuration would be OK for me but I still wonder whether the system
should be able to boot from a CD when SATA RAID/AHCI is set to Disabled? If
this option is disabled and it could possibly boot from a CD, would a
diskette still be required? I wish I did not need a diskette to complete the
installation just like with standard IDE.

Now I am looking for good SATA racks to put my HDDs in and then close my box
hopefully once for good. I am looking for Enermax UC-S106TMFA since I am
satisfied with the IDE version of those racks.
--
Noël