sata_nv NForce3 SATA driver on installer

[Robert L Cochran]

I have a lot of PATA hard drives laying around. I really want to use the
SATA controllers on my MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard, but I'm loathe
to buy an SATA hard drive. Instead I bought a serial ATA converter that
plugs into a PATA drive and turns it into an SATA drive. I chose the
Highpoint RocketHead 100 Serial ATA Converter. 

For the test drive, I plugged the converter into an older (around 1999)
25.5 Gb IBM drive and connected that to the SATA1 controller on the
motherboard. I booted off the FC3 x86_64 CD 1 to start the installation
process, entering 'linux askmethod' at the prompt and selecting an NFS
Image installation method. 

The installation soon comes to a halt. The installer says it can't find
any hard drives. I come to a panel offering me the chance to select
drivers that might do what is needed. There is nothing in the list for
Nvidia or NForce3 SATA, although a bunch of other SATA drivers are
provided for other chipsets. 

Since the installer is offering me the chance to provide a driver --
good! -- I run over to another machine to see if I can get the sata_nv
driver on a floppy disk. I succeed, press F2 on the installer panel, and
get this message:

cannot find /tmp/drivers/modinfo, bad driver disk

Can anyone tell me what this is about?

What's the correct method of providing an external driver to the
installer -- how do I do that correctly?

And finally, even though I couldn't get the driver loaded for a fresh
installation of FC3T2 -- a fully updated FC3T2 drive with the 603 kernel
will boot just fine as an SATA device. I was pleasantly surprised.
smartd fails at boot time, and my Logitech QuickCam 4000 suddenly isn't
recognized, but what the heck -- my FC3T2 drive is on SATA, and seems to
work just fine.
 
Thanks

Bob Cochran
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA