DMA137 disk connected with DMA66 during boot. Where is itcontrolled?
 

Subject tells the story for the first IDE-channel.

It's even more weird on the second IDE-channel. There is a disk and a DVD-writer in master and slave position. During boot up I get the message that it is a DMA66 device but due to a 40 wire cable it is set to DMA33. It is a not 40 wires but 80. When I disconnect the DVD-drive it tells me the same as on the 1st channel, i.e. DMA137 gets DMA66.

What could be causing that and how can I change this behavior?

have you looked at man hdparm ?

Back from an extended trip -- sorry for the late reply.

Yes, I know hdparm, but I can't for the life of me find anything which controls a behavior like that of the second channel, i.e. lying about the number of wires in the cable ;), changing the maximum transfer rate because of a DVD-writer etc.

Do you know how SuSE tests the hardware?

Well. Last night during a line by line study of the "dmesg" output I noticed this:
So it seems to be that blasted PATA-driver (which can only handle 16 partitions anyway). Anybody seeing it please give it a kick in the butt for me ;).