SATA - How to access disk ???

["Thomas H. George" <lists@tomgeorge.info>]

The motherboard supports a SATA drive but on bootup there is no entry 
for it in /dev

If I recompile the 2.6.18 kernel including the module Device 
Drivers/SCSI Device Support/Low Level SCSI Drivers/Serial ATA (SATA) 
support the /dev has an entry for SDA and SDA1 BUT
during bootup irq is disabled and my dvdrw drive is very unhappy.

Is there a better way?

Tom George