Andreas Ronnquist <andreas.ronnquist@meritkonsult.se>
I've had similar problems with my nVidia 7050/630a chipset and Etch. If I
used the the stock 2.6.18 kernel, the screen filled up with those "Sata
link is down, taking too much time to respond." messages during boottime.
I think I didn't even see a prompt because it took too long to get there.
After installing a newer kernel (2.6.22 in my case), the SATA problems were
gone.
I guess you just need a newer kernel.