ULTRA DMA 5!!!!!!
Ok, here's what I had to do.
A PAIN IN THE BUTTOCKS, but it is working, and much much faster. STILL NOT PERFECT, by any means... but an acceptable FIX until Apple fixes things
Basically, I set an OLD WD BB series IDE drive (2 Meg Cache) up as MASTER in the bottom slot, and the internal Superdrive as SLAVE in the top slot.
Now. The cable WILL REACH if you are careful...
TAKE ALL HARD DISKS OUT OF THE MACHINE EXCEPT THE TWO PATA DRIVES (ONE HDD ONE DVD)
Install XP.
Install XP Drivers.
Reboot.
YAY! DMA 5.
As a benchmark, HDTUNE was giving the OLD INSTALL on SATA a MAX of 3.5MB/S!!! YES, that is NOT a MISPRINT! 3.5MB / SECOND!
This new install on the PATA is NOW benchmarking with HDTUNE at almost 40MB/Second on this old CRAAAAAAPPY PATA Drive.
I'm betting a much faster / better PATA drive would help a lot.
As far as Windows booting times go:
Counting the left-to-right XP Blinking Orange Light while loading XP... on my MacPro with SATA XP INSTALL it was around 28 counts.
With this install its at 6.
Def. not as fast as it should be (about 3 to 4), but much much much much better AND livable.Now, what the HECK do we do about the Internal DVD? The Apple Key doesn't work anymore... and it's a PAIN to get the drive bay open.
Ok... I then REMOVED the Stock Apple DVD DRIVE...
Set the WD PATA Drive as SINGLE.
Threw the Stock Apple DVD DRIVE in an external Firewire case, attached it to the machine, and VOILA!
Keyboard eject key doesn't work, but NOW I have the eject button on the DVD Player itself!
ALSO, the firewire case still lets you BOOT off the OS X DVD externally!
Next step...
Install SATA Drives back in case... reformat, reinstall...
It's a BEAUTIFUL THING!
Again, not an IDEAL solution...
But worlds better, and at least LIVABLE until Apple fixes this darned SATA issue with XP!
~HURRY APPLE, HURRY!