IDE class driver with SATA controllers

[Andrew Chew]

In my perusal of the kernel code, I noticed that the IDE subsystem
handles IDE controllers at legacy IO ports if no other driver claims
them (albeit without DMA support).  I was wondering if it could be
extended to support SATA controllers 
that aren't mapped to legacy I/O ports.

I'm aware of the idex=base,ctl,irq kernel option, but I can't seem to
get this to work with my SATA controller (using ide6=base,ctl,irq).

The reason I'm asking is because it would seem like a good thing to have
SATA controllers that are broadly compatible with IDE to be usable
without having to modify the core kernel drivers.  This would at least
allow a user to perform a Linux install on a SATA drive even if that
kernel doesn't have explicit support for the SATA controller.  A
kernel/driver update can then take place after the install.

Also, are there plans for libata to take over the IDE class driver
functionality in the future?
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