[lug] proc or other master/slave IDE indicator?

[D. Stimits]

I have a machine with complicated cabling, buried where it isn't easy to 
get to it. Combine this with another machine in a similar state of 
requiring Xena flips and screams to reach. Shared among these is an IDE 
drive on a removeable IDE tray, and it is impossible to figure out from 
this drive whether it is master or slave. Each machine has a CD ROM (and 
in fact I am replacing one with a cheap cd drive so it can read CD-R), 
and the old CD being replaced is scsi, so there is no knowledge of which 
  the setting is for master/slave among these. Well, there are a few 
Xena flips and acrobatic maneuvers, some cussing, some cut hands from 
reaching around corners...you get the idea. Can anyone tell me if there 
is a way from /proc/ (I browsed /proc/ide/) or something else to tell me 
if a particular drive is on master, slave, or cable select on the IDE? I 
might end up just trying different configs till the CD works, but even 
that is not so easy without some serious furniture moving (I'm now 
sitting beneath the table, contorted, typing on a keyboard way above my 
head, straining to read this, just to get the cover off). For all I 
know, the kernel and o/s do not know any difference between 
master/slave/cable select on IDE, in which case I should just hire an 
acrobat :P

D. Stimits, stimits AT attbi DOT com