> ?how did you know "it falls back to > use the chipset p-ata mode"?
I have an ASUS M2NPV-VM mainboard with the same nvidia nForce 430 chipset. OpenSolaris (SXCE) doesn't use the nvidia sata driver "nv_sata", but the "ata" driver. That works OK, but didn't allow me to hot-swap s-ata drives while Solaris is up and running (I'm using s-ata hdd drives for amanda network backup). Fix was to add the missing PCI-ID -> nv_sata bindings, and clean up the mess that is caused by such a change of the root disk controller driver. Now I'm able to swap s-ata drives while the system is running This message posted from opensolaris.org
