> Well, I have such a board here and I don't have any problems with it.
> Maybe it's a problem with the PCI implementation of your motherboard ?
> Did you try playing with BIOS settings ? What chipset is it ?
 I haven't tried any BIOS settings, I'd have to get a monitor over to the
machine. I'm open to the possibility that it's a bad implimentation on my
motherboard, but I wanted to know if anyone else had encountered this
before before giving up on fixing it.

 The chipset is a Intel BX chipset, I've tried 2 drives both Western
Digitals (A 80GB and a 100GB model) and as indicated, multiple ATA/66+
compliant 80wire 40pin cables.

 It's not something that I would consider criticial. I was thinking of
just buying a $18 promise ata-66 card and using that instead. The drives
seem to get around 10megabyte/sec on the BX ATA-33 controller, but they
get around 25 on a ATA-66 one.