Please help. ICH6 chipset: dvd drive dies after a short time

[John <h292@ied.com>]

hi, on a friend's laptop, the DVD drive dies after a short while and
takes down the main HD's DMA down with it, hda has to be reinstantiated
with hdparm -d1 /dev/hda,   but hdb (DVD drive) cannot be revived.

tried with both kernel 2.6.17 and 2.6.22/23

here is a link to 50kB+ debug info: http://ied.com/linux_dying_dvd_1.txt
contents:
( uname -a; lspci; lspci -n; tail -600 /var/log/syslog; cd /proc ; head
-100 $( cd /proc ; find ide -type f  ) ; hdparm -iI /dev/hda /dev/hdb )
This contents was generated *after* the bug manifested, and manual
hdparm -d1 /dev/hda was issued.

What else should be in the contents to help you guys pinpoint the problem?

Should I include the 50kB+ contents inside this message, or is posting a
link better?
 
Can someone please suggest what to try to pass to kernel at boot to work
around, so the drive doesn't die? (If I absolutely had to, I would try
to recompile the kernel -- I haven't done that in a few years.)

 Thanks a bunch in advance,

    John