Maxim S. Shatskih wrote:
Same for me... though you probably would have sped up the nightmare
I had when adding an IDE disk to a single-SCSI-disk W2K machine, and
wanted to keep booting off the SCSI disk where the OS and apps
reside...

BIOS boot order setting. All BIOSes known to me from Pentium-3 up
support this.

Not if the SCSI BIOS is on the SCSI board (typically an Adaptec one in my
history): that add-on BIOS installs its INT13 handler ahead of the mobo's
BIOS's. In these cases, 0x80 is the IDE disk, and 0x81 is the SCSI disk, and
that Dell BIOS doesn't support (do other BIOSes support that?) booting off
0x81


What I understand from your explanation is that:
- if both PATA controllers are enabled, the mapping is:
Controller #0 = first PATA aka Primary, Master [today: my IBM disk]
+ Slave [today: my Seagate ATA100 disk]
Controller #1 = second PATA aka Secondary, Master [today: my DVD
burner] + Slave [today: nothing]
Controller #2 = 1st SATA [today: my Seagate SATA disk] , 2nd SATA
[today: nothing]

Yes.

Controller #1 = SATA, Primary Master [today: my Seagate SATA disk] +
Secondary Master [today: nothing] -- SATA runs in compatibility mode

Yes. The SATA controller is mapped to the task file of 0x170 of the
secondary IDE. If you have 1 SATA device - then fine absolutely, but
otherwise 2 SATA devices will hinder one another.

IOW it's NOT possible to have two SATA disks and one ATA disk, independently
on what you want to boot from?

What about two SATA disks and one non-disk ATA device?


What you don't describe is what happens if you disable the *first*
PATA controller.

Never tried it.

"native" mode). What I don't know is whether the BIOS can be told to
map the SATA controller to be "ahead" of any non-disabled ATA
controller(s)...

Check the boot order BIOS settings.


Will sure do it!