Okay Tony: Here (attached) is a pre-release version of hijack, with an extra tweak included. Dunno if this will make a difference here or not, but it doesn't seem to break anything on the SSD I'm using here (64GB version of the same brand/make).

All I've done is add hardware memory barrier instructions into the IDE command issuance code. Modern kernels do this everywhere, but the need for such had not been determined back in the empeg days. These prevent register writes/reads from getting performed out of the intended sequence by the compiler and/or CPU.