SATA DVD drive no longer works

Hi

I have a DVD drive that was in the past detected as:

<TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223F SB00>

It's been a long time since I tried to use it because it's only
been able to play about 1/10 of my DVD colloction.  It's now with
a recent (>4 days old CURRENT) not even detected.

My ATA hardware is detected as follows:

atapci1: <nVidia nForce MCP67 SATA300 controller> port 0xc480-0xc487,0xc400-0xc403,0xc080-0xc087,0xc000-0xc003,0xbc00-0xbc0f mem 0xfe9f6000-0xfe9f7fff irq 22 at device 9.0 on pci0
atapci1: [ITHREAD]
atapci1: AHCI Version 01.10 controller with 4 ports PM supported
ata2: <ATA channel 0> on atapci1
ata2: [ITHREAD]
ata3: <ATA channel 1> on atapci1
ata3: [ITHREAD]
ata4: <ATA channel 2> on atapci1
ata4: [ITHREAD]
ata5: <ATA channel 3> on atapci1
ata5: [ITHREAD]

If I 'atacontrol reinit ata2' (where the drive is connected) it
takes much less time than the other controlers which have nothing
on them, but it still turns up no hardware:

[brane] /var/db/pkg # time atacontrol reinit ata2
Master:      no device present
Slave:       no device present

real    0m0.012s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.011s
[brane] /var/db/pkg # time atacontrol reinit ata3
Master:      no device present
Slave:       no device present

real    0m1.010s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m1.009s
[brane] /var/db/pkg # time atacontrol reinit ata4
Master:      no device present
Slave:       no device present

real    0m1.009s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m1.009s
[brane] /var/db/pkg # time atacontrol reinit ata5
Master:      no device present
Slave:       no device present

real    0m1.010s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m1.008s

ISTR a discussion where people were having problems with nvidia
controlers and SATA.  If this is the cause and unfixable bue to
lack of documentation, I'm not opposed to changing the motherboard,
although it has just about the best clock (-4.8ppm) that I've ever
seen on a motherboard and I'd be sad to loose that.

I can offer login/serial console+gdb to a developer willing to take
this problem on.

Ian

--
Ian Freislich