ide cdrom problem, cured by reboot

[Brian Craft]

An ide dvd drive on my system is getting into an unusable state, which is cured
by reboot. When it's mucked up, I get endless messages as follows, and
processes accessing the drive remain in uninterruptable sleep for several
minutes.

Feb 15 01:00:58 porky kernel: hdd: ATAPI reset complete
Feb 15 01:01:07 porky kernel: hdd: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Feb 15 01:01:07 porky kernel: hdd: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x30
Feb 15 01:01:15 porky kernel: hdd: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Feb 15 01:01:15 porky kernel: hdd: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x30
Feb 15 01:01:23 porky kernel: hdd: cdrom_decode_status: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Feb 15 01:01:23 porky kernel: hdd: cdrom_decode_status: error=0x30
Feb 15 01:01:23 porky kernel: hdd: ATAPI reset complete

The drive remains unusable until reboot. I've tried reloading the kernel
modules (cdrom, ide-cd) and issuing "hdparm -w", both of which have no effect.
Momentarily ejecting the disc sometimes allows it to work for a bit, but
rebooting seems to be the best workaround.
 
I see in the archive that there have been posts about these error messages, but
I didn't find any replies that address them. Is there a faq somewhere that
covers this?

The kernel is the redhat kernel-smp-2.4.18-24.8.0 release. The mainboard is an
Asus P2B-D (IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 1)).

Any ideas?

b.c.