UltraATA100 controller card boot options

Here is my setup...A7v133-c motherboard....with cdburner connected as master on primary ide controller dvd drive and zip drive connected as master/slave on secondary ide controller....I have added the Maxtor/Promise ATA100 controller card in the last pci slot of the machine and have 98se installed on the primary drive 40 gig.....I have another 40 gig drive on the secondary ide channel of the card.....I am wanting to be able to intall either windows xp or linux redhat 7 on the 2nd 40 gig drive....independant of the primary drive with 98se on it...meaning that I would unhook the 98se drive during the installation phase of either xp or linux.....then reconnect that drive later....what I need to know is can I access the UltraAta100 controller card bios to select which drive it boots too.....I have set on my motherboard bios to boot from scsi but there is no reference there to choose whether primary or secondary drive.....hoping that this can be done from the promise bios....any suggestions.....I do not want to do a standard dual boot because I do not want anything touching my 98se drive....it is rock solid and stable just the way it should be....the other drive would be for test setups and such.....all input is welcome

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I think a dual boot situation will be created if you have both drives hooked up on the Promise controller at the same time. If the one drive (w/ XP or Linux) is only used for test situations, why don't you put it on your mobo's Secondary IDE channel(move the DVD to Slave on the Primary) as master. Keep your boot options as SCSI controller as the first device, then when you want to get to the XP drive, switch the boot order in BIOS. Does this sound feasible, or more like gibberish?

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sounds very feasible...I just don't want to do it that way if I dont have too...the idea is to unhook the 98se drive during the xp or linux install....then have the ata100 controller bios let me determine which drive it boots too.....have cdr as master on secondary and dvd and zip as master slave setup on primary on the motherboard connectors....If I cannot do it by the card I will not do it at all....

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You'll have to check your controller card's manual to be sure, but I don't think there is any way to select which drive will be the boot drive on a Promise card. Some SCSI cards had this option, as well as some IDE cards, but I don't think this one does. However, if you have an extra $50-$70, there is a switch plate module available from www.tigerdirect.com (or other places like www.cyberguys.com ) that allows you to use a button to select from one of three hard drives to boot from. This would allow you to do what you want without any boot manager software of mbr changes, and at a relatively modest cost. It would also allow you to leave both drives mounted permanently instead of using a removable drive bay to swap them.

Trios RX-910T6 is the switch $80 in the store here in town.

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