Hi, i am using slackware 12.1 and an asus P5Q Pro m/b which has a Marvell 88SE6121 Sata II controller which is causing problems in that i cannot get out of pio mode for the Samsung sata hd or the pioneer dvd.
Trying " hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdc " gives a " HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted. " Same for the dvd player.

Searching on the web shows that others have had this problem with Marvell controllers.

have already upgraded from slack 12.0 to 12.1 which helped as now slack recognizes the 2 ide drives in the box which it didn't before. It classes them as scsi drives (sda and sdb) for some reason.

Any help appreciated. Thanks, catonic.

Try AHCI mode? (In the sata section in your bios)

I had a problem with a cheap syba controller(I forget the actual controller chip) but after I got an adaptec sata card everything was fine. It could be that that particular controller chip either sucks or its drivers aren't up to snuff.

After some more thinking and research the problem was "solved" by setting the bios to ahci and re-installing slackware. everything works like a rocket now.
The bad news is that XP will not boot as it does not support ahci which may mean having to buy vista or rig up a floppy disk and try to feed it the required driver during the install.
Hope this is of some use to someone. Cheers, catonic.

Actually, you just have to reinstall XP...

I've just bought the P5Q deluxe and, in researching, ran across this ahci howto: http://forum.ncix.com/forums/display...d.php?t=186471

linked from http://forum.ncix.com/forums/index.p...nt=0&subpage=1