The following issue was forwarded to me by Mike Paxton. The related discussion can be found in the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage newsgroup.

One very strange issue with the Promise Fasttrak SX4 S150 controller card that myself and others have run into is that it seems to require a PS/2 mouse to be attached to the computer or it will hang during drive detection. Had this happen on 4 out of 4 computers, with the fix each time being to attach a PS/2 (not USB) mouse. Without the PS/2 mouse attached, it would get to the drive detection phase, the progress meter would go across 3-4 dots, then the cursor would jump to the right side of the screen, and the system would hang with the only option being a hard reset (not even ctrl-alt-del). This is all with the Kingston KVR133X64C/256 memory module, which is approved in their memory compatability list (tried a few other mem modules anyway), so I more or less ruled out memory incompatability.

Anyway, this is just something that cost myself and others a lot of time and trouble (I actually RMA'd one card before I got suspicious), and I'd love to see the issue mentioned somewhere as Promise entirely ignored me when I reported it to them. Couldn't even be bothered to add it to a FAQ, much less fix it. Possibly it's been fixed in that beta BIOS... Not sure, since I only learned of that one in reading your article =). It's definitely an issue with their latest release BIOS for that card though.