Increasing max supported ide drives to more than 26

Increasing max supported ide drives to more than 26

[Tyler]

I would like to modify my kernel to be able to support more than the 
maximum of 26 IDE drives.

Its not that it won't support that many now, but when you have more than 
26 drives currently, they start being named things like /dev/hd{ 
/dev/hd; etc.. instead of like the scsi system where after they roll 
past /dev/sdz, they go to /dev/sdaa /dev/sdab, etc.

I've already configured my kernel to allow 20 IDE controllers (2 ports 
each), using the MAX_HWIFS in the include/asm-i386/ide.h file.  This 
allows all my controllers to be detected/used when linux starts, but the 
system doesn't letter the drives properly past /dev/hdz.

The system consists of  2 x onboard channels (4 drives), 4 x highpoint 
hpt374 chipset raid cards (not using built-in raid option) which gives 
16 ports (32 drives), and optionally, there's also a built-in promise 
pdc 20378 (currently unused and disabled in bios, and no drivers in kernel).

The driver that is included in the kernel (2.6.11.7) doesn't use scsi 
emulation.. it uses /dev/hdX lettering scheme (is there  a way to tell 
it to use scsi emulation / drive lettering), only the driver you 
download from highpoint uses scsi emulation and drive lettering.  I 
would prefer to have the option of using either the tainted proprietary 
driver, or the included kernel driver, and only the drive lettering is 
holding me back.. thanks

Tyler.