When loading the aic7xxx SCSI driver (either automatically or manually) the installation interface hangs, the only way to continue is a restart. I tried other drivers, but they simply won't work and give some error message :-( I'm using a motherboard ASUS P2B-DS with Intel 440BX AGP and Adaptec AIC-7890 chipset, so the aix7 should be the right one. Just to cross check I tried to install some SuSE 6.1 (04/1999) I have at hand and was surprised that it had absolutely no problem in booting my machine and correctly identifying my (SCSI) hardware ... I'll using it meanwhile, but it's X Server won't support my Matrox G400 :-(
Assigning to a developer for further action.
This also affects 6.2 when using the AIC-7892 built onto the motherboard of a Compaq Professional Workstation. It's a severe impediment for us as there appears to be no workaround at present (we're using Matrox cards too).
I discovered that, on my hardware, throttling back the SCSI speed from 160 to 80 solves this problem. The AIC7xxx driver loads and everything works just fine.
Later aic7xxx learned to drop back to U80 to avoid this bug. Finally in 2.4 the new Justin Gibbs aic7xxx redid all the handling to get the world happy at U160 for all drives