>Tony came over and explained some of the 2->2a differences to me.
>
>mlord, another newbie question, didn't you do a bunch of IDE work on linux?

Yeah, that's me. Linux IDE Guy 1992-1999 -- wrote the original IDE driver subsystem, which really hasn't changed much at all since I handed most of it to Andre Hendrick. He's been moving lots of chipset-init code into the kernel since then, but (IMHO) has lagged a fair bit on advancing the state of the art.
Modern IDE drives support tagged-queuing & disconnect, and practically all existing CD-ROM drives can do disconnect, but Linux has not been updated to provide those performance features.

Myself, I just putter away on things like chipset modules for pay, crypto drivers, and other kernel customizations for various clients these days.

Plus a current addict(ion) for hacking my Empeg.

Cheers!