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R/W Long can still be used to check partial ECC capability without doing anything special. It could have been modified to return all of the ECC bytes. This would allow ECC to be checked in it's entirety. It could further be used to verify correct drive operation, useful in testing. People had started cheating on the ECC correction bit as the power of the ECC was used to allow cheaper physical channels to be used. Additionally, the transfer mechanism was well understood and relatively easy to implement.
