Comment 153 for bug 285392

I confirm the bug on Debian 6.0.1 and on Ubuntu 11.04

Here is a photo what's going on the screen:
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/3044/pic0034k.jpg

Description:
The system boots only once right after the installation, then after the first reboot, when system starts, it says: "ataX: softreset failed (device not ready)" several times, then system doesn't start (can't found the SATA drive).

I tried several boot flags, such as "rootdelay=300" and "all_generic_ide" but in vane. When I try such flags as "acpi=off", "noapic" and "nolapic" there are no errors on screen but the system won't start as well because it can't find the SATA drive.

My hardware:
Motherboard name: Asus M2A-MX
Motherboard chipset: AMD 690V, AMD Hammer
BIOS type: AMI
CPU: AMD Athlon LE-1640, 2600 MHz

The BIOS settings are EXTREMELY poor! I can't change almost anything concerning SATA/IDE behaviour. It always displays an error "No ide master disk present" when starting a pc even with disabled IDE drives detection. What a lame BIOS and chipset!

From what I found, the bug exists because of a stupid hardware. Just look in wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_690_chipset_series
"SATA soft reset fails when PMP is enabled and devices will be not detected"

So, I checked the file "/boot/config-2.6.32-5-686" in the installed system and there are such strings there:
CONFIG_SATA_PMP=y

Some gentoo or slackware guy on an other forum says that he build custom kernel with param CONFIG_SATA_PMP=n and so the bug disappeared. I tried loading in a rescue mode and changed this param in the file "/boot/config-2.6.32-5-686" manually but it didn't help. Sorry, I don't know how to build a custom kernel by installing the system on a new PC. But maybe that could be the possible direction when solving the bug? What do you think?