Comment 2 for bug 439047

Update:

Choosing "continue with no disk drive" at the "Detect disks" dialogue results in the partitioner giving the same menu as in my initial report. I still have not succeeded in determining which, if any, driver in the list to try. This is the output from lspci when the machine is booted with a Jaunty desktop image:

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.5 PIC: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 I/O APIC Interrupt Controller
00:00.6 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Security Device
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge
00:02.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller (rev 80)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. Device 5372
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b0)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b0)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b0)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 90)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237S PCI to ISA Bridge
00:11.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8251 Ultra VLINK Controller
00:13.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A Host Bridge
00:13.1 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A PCI to PCI Bridge
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 [Chrome 9 HC] (rev 01)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 02)
07:03.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5788 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)
80:01.0 Audio device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT1708/A [Azalia HDAC] (VIA High Definition Audio Controller) (rev 10)

Conclusions so far:

1) Alternate installer fails to detect internal disk drive starting with Karmic Alpha 6.

2) When booting from USB, no warning is given of the drive detection failure, resulting in a warning message from the partitioner instead.

As mentioned, this hardware has worked fine with the alternate installer for Hardy, Intrepid, Jaunty, and Karmic Alphas 3, 4, and 5.