2.6.x DMA ALI chipset bugs

2.6.x DMA ALI chipset bugs

[plazmcman]

I have an old IBM ThinkPad (266MHz) with an ALi chipset.  lspci -v | grep -i 
ali reports: 

[addr] Host bridge: ... M1531
 Subsystem: ... M1531
[addr] ISA bridge: ... M1533
 Subsystem: ...M1533
[addr] IDE interface: ... M5229
[addr] Bridge: ... M7101 

Under kernel 2.4.22, DMA worked fine (~9MB/s hda).  With 2.6.(0,3,4,5), the 
machine won't work with DMA enabeled at boot. Kernel panics due to "can't 
find init", and stuff like "can't execute /etc/rc.d/rc.S", or 
"/sbin/agetty", etc. 

I _do_ have kernel support (built-in) for ALiM15x3. I can boot up the 
computer (kernel argument ide=nodma), and then attempt to turn DMA on - it 
will sometimes succed, _but_ there is no performance gain (~4MB/s - ugh). 

Any workarounds, patches, help? 

Thanks,
Brannon Klopfer