If you can access the driveand controller from another operating system, then it is not a problem withyour hardware configuration. Controller properly configured, but not detected. Some BIOS-less SCSI controllers require the user to specify information about the controller at boot time. Hard drive geometry not recognized. Also, certain SCSIcontrollers need to be told where to find drive geometry in order forLinux to recognize the layout of your drive.
Most distributions provide a bootup option to specify the drive geometry.
After installing the Linux software, you will be able to install LILO, allowing you to boot from the hard drive. At that time, you can specify thedrive geometry to the LILO installation procedure, making it unnecessary toenter the drive geometry each time you boot.