Boot 2900 from third party disk controller

[Andrew Reid]

How do I get the BIOS in a 2900 to boot from (or even see) a disk 
attached to a third party disk controller ?



Background:

All the slots on my PERC5i are in use, and I wish to install a new OS 
***without*** destroying anything on the virtual drives in the PERC. I 
cannot make a new virtual drive on the PERC as I have no room.

I installed a third party disk card (Silicon Image 3132 based) and 
attached a SATA drive. The I/O board's BIOS loads and sees the attached 
disk; I can enter its setup menu, etc. But the main Dell BIOS and the 
boot menu do not seem to see the disk or the controller.

I can get install the OS on the new drive, the right drivers load, etc. 
But grub (installed on a spare MBR on a PERC virtual drive) cannot see 
the disk, it only sees the virtual disks exported by the PERC.

Its is not a question of the drive "moving" or being renamed after 
install, the BIOS simply does not seem to make the drive available. In 
grub parlance, the device (hd4) does not exist.

My choices from the BIOS BOOT menus are C: (you've come a long way baby, 
but not far enough ;o), DISK (which shows PERC as the only option), 
CDROM, and NET

Alternatively, I tried to use the internal (motherboard) SATA port, but 
this did not seem to play nice with the PERC and caused a kernel panic 
(missing megasas interrupts) if I loaded the system with lots of IO.


Help, hints, laughter