i have managed to duplicate this problem verbatim:
   
   http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-cobalt/2004/09/16/0003.html
   
   on an ultra5 with a promise pdc20269-based card, 80-pin cable, uata133 disk,
   and netbsd 2.0-rc2. so i'm guessing that the card gets initialized at bios
   time on an x86 box, which obviously isn't happening here or on a cobalt.
   has anyone researched this yet? any ideas where to start? i'm not above
   disassembling the prom...
   
   it's an incredible testimony to the netbsd developers that this works at
   all, but it doesn't solve the, uh, performance challenge of an ultra5's
   on-board ide :)


promise controllers have always been unstable on sparc64 in
my experience.  there are a few posts on port-sparc64 including
one from myself.  personally i suspect our promise-specific code
but just moved the promise card into my G4 and have used a
silicon image ATA100 IDE card, and current use a silicon image
3112 SATA card.  helps performance a lot :)



.mrg.