My Gigabyte GA-E3800N (rev. 1.x) motherboard has only two SATA connectors. I bought a VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6421 IDE/SATA Controller and plugged it into my one and only PCI connector. Invoking lspci, it is recognized as 02:00.0 RAID bus controller. Is there some way I can mount a hard drive or DVD connected to it, preferably at boot time, because neither device appears accessible anywhere.
Thanks to both of you for the speedy responses. I believe the problem was physical, because when I removed the card to confirm its maker, I wiped the contacts with a liitle acetone. Then just to cover all the possibilities I replaced the SATA cable which had retaining clips with another without clips. Now everything works and the cable is in the garbage.