According to Manuel Bouyer:
>
>The alternate status could be cool but we don't use it now, but the ATA-5
>draft explicitely mention its use in the protocols. I'm not sure we will be
>able to always avoid its use in the future.
>

If you want/expect to support ESDI/ST506 drives then you cannot use
the alternate status register because they just don't have it.  Of
course these days I don't know if many people are interested in those
drives considering the size/capacity of the things but I bet there are
some out there....

-- 
===============================================================================
Brett Lymn, Computer Systems Administrator, British Aerospace Australia
===============================================================================