[PLUG] SATA with Linux RAID

[Josh]

Well it has been a busy day of server repairs and now a new system 
install that is giving me a headache.  Well not a headache but is 
bothering me beyond my willingness to continue without some expert 
advice.  Heck I'd settle for some little advice. 

So, I bought all new parts for a server running 3 SATA drives to make a 
RAID 5 system.  This was going to be a software raid with CentOS 4.2.  
The install went well.  It found the drives and installed a RAID 
system.  I actually installed about 3 times now.  Tried LVM on RAID 5 
with RAID 1 for /boot.  That didn't work so I rebuilt with RAID 5 and 
RAID 1 only and that didn't work.  What I'm seeing is that when I reboot 
I only get a flashing cursor after it gets past POST.   I thought since 
the installer recognized the hard drives and the BIOS has an option to 
boot to the 3rd IDE Master (SATA drives) that I'd be fine.  Well, it 
turns out that Linux or CentOS is looking for something a bit different. 

So my questions would be:

1. Do you know what would cause this behavior
2. Is there a 4 Channel SATA Motherboard that others have used to make a 
bootable RAID install of LINUX that they would recommend?
3. Is there an inexpensive 4 channel SATA card that I could buy that 
would work? 


Thanks for any suggestions.  I've been reading all over the Web for the 
last 5 hours and no concrete solutions so far. 

Josh