Work have just issued me with a Compaq M300. It worked fine
for three hours or so with 1.5.1, and then the harddisc
timed out initially with a DMA failure. The only way to get out appeared 
to be power off the machine and then have to do an fsck from hell.

I spoke to a friend with the same laptop and he says he has
had the same problem with OpenBSD (2.8 I believe). I've done a few
queries of the PR database but that didn't turn up much.

Are there any known issues with the Intel 82371AB IDE controller?

best wishes, 
-- Chris