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A note regarding PATA<->SATA hardware bridges, and vendor-reserved commands.
As Nathan M and Pat noted, there is a question of what happens for a vendor-reserved ATA command that must traverse a PATA<->SATA bridge.
For those unfamiliar with the current hardware landscape, many early SATA host controllers were simply pre-existing PATA solutions with a SATA bridge. I call these "first gen SATA", to distinguish them from the non-bridged, usually FIS-based SATA controllers coming out today.
First gen SATA controllers will typically -not- be able to control the command protocol associated with a vendor-reserved ATA command. As I noted in my response to Pat, my guess is that the SATA bridges will work for non-data and PIO[-mult] protocols only, but I have no test results to back this up.
PATA controllers and "second generation" SATA controllers shouldn't have any problem with a vendor-reserved command's protocol requirements, however esoteric.
Jeff
