FAILURE - ATAPI_IDENTIFY timed out

[Alexey Koptsevich]

Hello,

I have a computer (x86 with one IDE drive) which I would like to host both 
FreeBSD and Linux. I installed Linux there, and it works fine. I then 
tried to install 5.3-RELEASE from the CD, but the installer failed to find 
the hard drive and locked with the error message
   ata0-master: FAILURE - ATAPI_IDENTIFY timed out

I then connected this drive to another machine running 5.3R compiled from 
sources, and installed the system there using DESTDIR, and arranged 
booting through lilo -- same result. Loader's "lsdev" shows IDE drive, but 
then the same ATAPI_IDENTIFY failure happens, and "List of GEOM managed 
disk devices" appears to contain only fd0.

The thread about ATAPI_IDENTIFY failure already appeared in 
current at freebsd on 10/29/04, and the problem was probably resolved since 
then. Is it really necessary to upgrade to -CURRENT, or I am doing 
something wrong?

Thanks,
Alex