Notes on ATA/133 patch (ide.2.4.14.11062001.patch)

["Adam J. Richter" <adam@yggdrasil.com>]

Hello Andre,

	Thank you very much for implementing the 48-bit ATA controller
support in your recent IDE kernel patches (ide.2.4.14.11062001.patch).
I am using a Maxtor 160GB hard disk with your patches on linux-2.4.15-pre5,
and it seems to be working well so far (two hours).

	I do have a couple of minor notes about your patch.  I could
generate some diffs, but they're simple and I'm not completely sure
about the right solution.

	1. Your patch creates a circular dependency between the ide-mod.o
and ide-probe-mod.o modules, which is only noticible when IDE support
is compiled as a module.  The problem is that ide.c has the
EXPORT_SYMBOL declarations for export_ide_init_queue and
export_probe_for_drive in ide-probe.c.  At the moment, I have
moved the two EXPORT_SYMBOL declarations to the ide-probe.c, but I
believe the correct solution is just to remove the two routines
from your patch, since it appears that nothing uses them yet.

	2. A while ago, I posted a change that modularizes partition
support (in reality, I never use the kernel-based partition code, but
that's another matter).  Your declaration of ide_xlate_1024_hook to
fs/partitions/msdos.c creates a circular dependency in my kernel (but
not in Linus's), which I fixed by moving the declatation to
fs/partitions/check.c.  I do not yet understand the purpose of
ide_xlate_1024 to understand whether it really is specific to the
MSDOS style of partition labeling.

	Anyhow, I hope this information is helpful.  Please let me know
if you want me to geneate a patch or test anything.  So far, your patch
seems to be working very well.  Thank you very much for developing it.

Adam J. Richter     __     ______________   4880 Stevens Creek Blvd, Suite 104
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