On a hint from Soeren Schmidt, we looked at the Promise ATA cables. The 1U box integrator had reversed the cable, controller-end to disk, and disk-end to controller.
With great difficulty, due to the cable routing having the middle ATA connector falling right on a too-small feedthrough hole (could explain why the integrator reversed the cable in the first place. it's a "reversible" flat cable after all!!), we got the cable connected controller-end to controller, and disk-end to disk and dmesg now shows;
ar0: 39083MB <ATA SPAN array> [4982/255/63] status: READY subdisks: 0 READY ad4: 39083MB <Maxtor 6Y040L0> [79408/16/63] at ata2-master UDMA133
ar1: 39083MB <ATA SPAN array> [4982/255/63] status: READY subdisks: 0 READY ad6: 39083MB <Maxtor 6Y040L0> [79408/16/63] at ata3-master UDMA133
Thanks Soeren!!
Len
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