Andrew Morton wrote:
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.15-rc5/2.6.15-rc5-mm1/
I just noticed (maybe too late) that this kernel has the "pata_via" driver and decided to try it. It works here, but has one drawback: it is slower than the old "via82cxxx" IDE driver.
My configuration with the via82cxxx driver:
/dev/hda = disk, QUANTUM FIREBALLlct20
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-5 T13 1321D revision 1
/dev/hdb = SAMSUNG CD-ROM SC-148F
Drive is old, supports only mdma2
There are also /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd, irrelevant here.
With the via82cxxx driver, I can get speed around 20 MB/s from /dev/hda. The pata_via driver downgrades this to 7 MB/s because it needlessly drops the disk to MWDMA2 mode.