after a week of fighting with an atom with ich7r sata in ide mode, i finally found the secret sauce that keeps it from "hanging." i pushed out a changed quanstro/9load-e820 and quanstro/sd which boot on my atom machine in ide mode without causing interrupt storms. other changes were included work around ahci power quirks for this chipset, if your bios supports it, i would recommend ahci mode. i also pushed out a version of ether8169 as quanstro/8169 that supports the particular 8169 macs that are in my atom machine (and jumbo frames).
i have a feeling that these changes may be helpful in correcting other intel ich-based ide problems. i've got an intel ich6-based machine that has exhibited similar symptoms at work that i hope to test tomorrow. i'll be interested to hear if these changes work for other people. - erik
