-> -> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda (or whatever drive it is) bs=1024
->  WC> count=whatever...

->  WC> fdisk -l ( from Ramdisk Knoppix Linux) no longer sees the drive at
->  WC> all. 

->  WC> I _may_ give it one last try using your command above. What 
->  WC> specification for the hard drive is the "count" in
your command 
->  WC> above.

-> Actually I've found that with dd if you leave stuff out it seems to do just
-> fine,  most of the time.  If you leave out "count" it'll do
the whole drive. If
-> you just want to stomp on the MBR after something else has messed it up, then a
-> fairly low number will do.

OK, got you.

->  WC> On the Promise card the drive would be /dev/hde.

-> I did try one of those cards one time in a linux box here.  With the MB stuff
-> still enabled,  the ports on that card were hde, f, g, and h if I'm remembering
-> right (with a, b, c, and d being the original MB ports). 
   
My Promise card landed on /hde for the hard drive.

->  What I wanted to try
-> but haven't gotten around to yet was disabling the ports in the CMOS setup and
-> seeing if the ones on the card would then be seen as hda, etc.

I did that, problem was the card doesn't hardware support ATAPI despite
being  advised otherwise by someone.
You have to have Windows or Windows extended drivers installe for the
card to see the CD-ROM drive.

All my current software is on CD so I HAD to leave the CD drive on the
motherboard I/O.

->  WC> Linux last saw the drive as 85 Gig when in fact it's a 65 Gig drive
->  WC> after attempting to install Windows first.

-> Odd.  I'm not sure what to make of that just yet. I expect I'll start bumping
-> into this sort of thing when I actually get my hands on some larger drives
-> (biggest I have now is a 10G,  which is sitting here waiting for me to install
-> it).         

Just don't use the original release fdisk and format that came with the
first Win 98 offering.      

->  WC> Now even on the Promise card the drive isn't seen at all.

-> Weird.

Yeah, I doubt dd will work when neither fdisk /dev/hde or fdisk -l
see the drive.

There's an outside possibility I powered down the drive's power in
CMOS so I may try once more but there were two major
shortcomings this Ultra card had I was advised would not be a probelm.

There wouldn't have been a problem if I'd just stuck with straight
Linux.
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5