So, I have a fedora core 5 system with an asus a8v motherboard, and a amd x2 proccesor, and a e western digital sata drive. Well, everyone in a while my system completely locks up, I could ctrl - alt F1 or F2 but I cant do anything there login.

Anyway, These messages print out
ata1: command oxca timeout stat ox50 host - stat ox4
ata1: status 0x50 {drive ready} seek complete.

My boot parameters kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp ro root=LABEL=/32 rhgb pci=nommconf pci=noacpi ide=nodma pci=routeirq nolacpi noacpi disableapic quiet

I added those in vain attempts to solve this problem.
I added pci=nommconf from http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=75299 because i had the nvrm xid problem also.

the others i just found on forums. I thought I stopped it for a few weeks.

This is really annoying. I hope it isnt hardware.

I plan to upgrade to fedora core 6 tommarow.

One possible reason for this sort of random lock up is the PSU not being powerfull enough or not providing smooth enough power. This was very prevalent a couple of years ago when GFX cards started to get power hungry and fussy about voltage levels.

Maybe but I have an antec smartpower 500 watt.

+5V
35A

+12V
17A

12V2
19a

+3.3v
32a

-12v
.3a

+5vSb
2a

That should be good enough I think.

sounds good.
My next tought woould be to try a live CD like knoppix and see if you experiecne the same issue, but I realise that maybe a pain to do any work with.