How to install linux distro's on Asrock Alive NF5-eSATA2+ motherboard

[eekie]

The Asrock Alive NF5-eSATA2+ motherboard has an NVIDIA 520 chip with limited bios options. It accommodates four SATA disks or two SATA and two eSATA disks. My previous motherboard the 939SLI32-eSATA is equipped with an Uli chipset and had the same harddisk configuration possibilities. In the old situation I had two equal disks in raid-0 and two inequal disks in SATA config. The raid bios could see the SATA disks. I had windows on the raid-0 and suse 10.2 and kubuntu edgy on the SATA disks. Multibooting was achieved with Grub and later via Easybcd with the vista bootloader.
The new board's bios however distinguishes only three possibilities: non-raid -all disks visible during POST and SMART enabled-, raid -only raid and jbod disks visible during POST no SMART support- and AHCI. You must disable the eSATA in order to use the SATA disks. In raid mode SATA disks are not visible in the bios nor in windows. They can be made visible by forming a jbod array in the disks bios.
I can install kubuntu gibbon to the jbod disk. Installing suse 10.3 from the install CD gives problems. It hangs when loading ahci. The last three lines of the install log are:
Asrock In MCP65 AHCIcontroller
drivers: ahci
loading ahci_

The cursor blinking infinitely!
Although I could fully install kubuntu, I cannot start it. I installed Grub bootloader to the work directory of kubuntu on the jbod drive (When you allow the default installation then it installs grub in the mbr of the raid disks.
This ruins the vista bootloader and cripples grub).
If I start-up the computer from the jbod nothing happens, if I start up from the raid I get the bootloader made with easybcd in which I have made two neo grub entries for linux. One in which grub is not installed in the MBR and one in which grub is installed in the work directory of kubuntu. None of the two succeeds in starting up grub. Fortunately it does start up Vista

To me it seems unbelievable NVIDIA producing chips not providing linux installation possibilities.
Does anybody know how to tackle this problem?

[eekie]

Re: How to install linux distro's on Asrock Alive NF5-eSATA2+ motherboard

I have solved the problem for Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. When starting the real installation after preparing the language, time (zone) and the partitioning you will find an advanced button in the window. When you press this button it will show that grub is installed in (hd0).
The trick is that the numbering of the harddisks is rather unlogical. The raid disks are designated sda and sdc, The first jbod disk is sdb and the second one sdd. So if you install on sdb you have to put grub in (hd1).
You can then start kubuntu from the jbod disks or make an entry in easybcd where you check the box: grub not installed in boot partition. Then you can start kubuntu from the vistabootloader