>>> Can a shark support two disks on the IDE connector [...]?
>> I've never tried it, but I see no obvious reason why not [...]
> I'll report on my experiences. :)

I had a chance to do this sooner than I expected.

It doesn't work. :(  The boot ROMs manage to load the (3.1) kernel OK,
and the kernel finds both drives

...
wd0 at atabus0 drive 0: <TOSHIBA MK6409MAV>
wd0: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA addressing
wd0: 6194 MB, 13424 cyl, 15 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 12685680 sectors
wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 2 (Ultra/33)
wd1 at atabus0 drive 1: <QUANTUM FIREBALLlct08 04>
wd1: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA addressing
wd1: 4112 MB, 8912 cyl, 15 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 8421840 sectors
wd1: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 4 (Ultra/66)
boot device: wd0
root on wd0a dumps on wd0b

but it hangs there.  I've waited multiple minutes.  I thought it might
be power, but for the latest test I powered the drives off a nearby
desktop machine that has its cover off, and still no joy.

I don't yet know whether it's objecting to a slave drive, or objecting
to two drives, or the master drive not correctly handling the presence
of a slave drive (the master is a laptop drive), or what; I'll do more
experiments when I have the leisure, later today.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B