since i got my rma replacement shuttle, its disk performance was sub-par, and it has problems handling magic SysRq (ie, it ignores me).
hdparm said that the disks were only in udma2 mode (previous entries suggest that it can do better). i found seen some things on the internet about the ide problems; some page suggested passing ide0=66 ide1=66, however this yielded a /dev/hde and /dev/hdg, both in udma2.
the other day i couldn't sleep so i went looking again on the internet and some post mentioned 80-pin cables. so, i found some good page describing that and a bunch of other stuff about ide cables that i didn't know. unfortunately, when i checked the shuttle it had 80-pin cables.
today i was going to try to put a new BIOS on it, and noticed that the cables were plugged in backwards (which really matters for 80-pin, i guess). anyway it can do udma5 again.
magic SysRq still rarely works, either from the keyboard or from netconsole.
Wednesday night. Rain. Windy. Lows in the mid 30s.