RSS 
Well, with some more research I came upon this wiki gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_SATA and this Gentoo forum thread forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2629787.html#2629787.
Basically you have to modify /usr/src/linux/include/linux/libata.h. ATA suport and PATA support are not on by default because not all the drivers support them yet, but the ich6m (pxii) does. So change:
#undef ATA_ENABLE_PATA #undef ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI
to
#define ATA_ENABLE_PATA 1 #define ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI 1
Then I removed all ide support and compiled with scsi cdrom support. hdparm didn't report much better but I was able to watch a dvd functionally with xine (totem doesn't quite play nice with dvds yet). The dvddrive should show up as /dev/sr0. Also, you'll have to add yourself to the disk group if you want to read it as non root.
Most of my reading has said that the libata and sata interface are new and under heavy development so they will be getting better and suporting mroe with time. Thats why hdparm gives ioctl errors for instance. I'm in reasonably comfortable place now with everything configured properly finally so I can just wait for things to improve. :)
I've also finally and belatedly name my laptop nika. Try to guess where the name is from.
