I've eliminated the dma. And now nothing about ide1 even appears in dmesg, which is the same as the first time it happened except there was a line about it re: dma. so maybe it will spontaneously start working again. I suspect a cable or especially the cdrom drive, which was used and so we just put it in and left it there since it worked and saved me the cost of a new one. And it did work just fine--for a while! Cheryl
