Hdparm DMA on Newer (SATA) Systems

[David Baron <d_baron@012.net.il>]

I get:
HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

on bootup and any attempt to read or set dma for either the IDE or the SATA 
disk on my system. This is dual core (P4 by hyperthreading?) intel cpu:

~$ lscpu
Architecture:          i686
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
CPU(s):                2
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    1
CPU socket(s):         1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            15
Model:                 4
Stepping:              3
CPU MHz:               3000.392
L1d cache:             16K
L2 cache:              2048K

Running the stock 32-bit kernel from Sid.