I was sure it would be DMA too :-). Wonder if multicount makes that much
of a difference?

It doesn't, I tried just before leaving this morning.  No diff.

Either way, one of the first things I typically do on a server is add an
hdparm line with whatever the disks need for that particular machine.

I don't understand the above "whatever the disks need" portion of this 
statement.  Can you give me a little more detail?

So, even if you can't get your distribution to tune your IDE chipset and
IDE hard drives perfectly, with something like multicount or write
caching, its effective (IMHO) to just force your settings on boot.

What settings am I to force?  And to what values?  I guess I'm asking, 
are you saying just put the hdparm setting in a rc.local?  If so, I'm 
still stumped on what those settings need to be

Thanks
Jay