In reply to:

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When I raised the problem with support they asked me if I was using a third party kernel, which I am (mlord's Hijack kernel). They recon that the problem is being caused by mlord's stuff masking irqs for longer than the standard kernel.

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Bull-pucky.

I wrote the code in the "standard" kernel, too (which has been augmented by the nice folks at Empeg), and can confidently ensure that the "hijack" kernels don't affect disk detection in the slightest.

The difficulty with IDE drive detection, is that the resets occur serially: first the master drive starts up, and it WAITS for the slave drive. Many manufacturers don't implement the protocol exactly the same way, and so sometimes the master/slave sync fails. Reversing the drive jumpers often cures this (change master to slave, and viceversa). But also, the ATA specs say that either drive can take up to 30 seconds to respond, if needed. Nobody but nobody really wants a Linux kernel to hang around for 60 seconds waiting for IDE startup...

Cheers

Mark Lord
Linux IDE Author