unfortunately I don't think that's possible. There is no way to
generate a read cycle to PCI memory space on this hardware without all
of the byte enables being set. Normally this isn't a problem, a full

Ok so this isn't about not being able to do the workaround, you have
hardware which is just busted ? Is this devel hardware or stuff in mass
circulation ?

  The patch is a relatively clean work around for limitations in the
hardware I'm using, but I know it probably looks like just more
cruft from an outside perspective so I won't be championing it :)

I would make the switch a runtime value personally - some network drivers
do this for similar reasons.

Alan