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In the kernel from Red Hat, 2.0.36-3, & the 2.0.36 on the 5.2 linux CD, the scsi driver aic7-xxx.c, version 5.1.4, does not work properly for the AIC-7880 SCSI controller. 2 Problems: (1) SCSI Bus Timeout when mounting cdrom, ... in fact, the installer does not work from the CD. (2) kernel source 2.0.36, obtained from ftp site linux.us.kernel.org; the scsi bus continually times out when loaded with this kernel. Solution: There is a patch available from ASL Workstations for this driver. Perhaps Red Hat should patch their 2.0.36 kernel, or, at the very least make it available. In my case, this problem has cost me about 5-7 days since tech support never returns the emails. Especially, since the tech support is so unresponsive, you should consider making it available to that people can just help themselves and not get stuck waiting for some support person who will never show up.
I was able to get this to fail using the stock boot disk that shipped with 5.2. After obtaining the updated boot image that contained the aic7xxx fix (ftp://updates.redhat.com/5.2/images/i386/boot.img) The install worked fine with the configuration in question. Then after following the directions also posted to our errata page I rebooted the machine and was able to access the cdrom and hard drive without error. The instructions are available at http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/rhl/rh52-errata-general.html#kernel.