/etc/rc.sysinit, for no good reason, restricts seting of ide drive paramters to
media type "disk".  Often a "cdrom" will require the exact same treatment (for
example, to disable DMA).

Something like this is required:


<if [ "$hdmedia" = "disk" ]; then
---
>if [ "$hdmedia" = "disk" ] || [ "$hdmedia" = "cdrom" ]; then

(note that you actually have to move it a little later, after the device is
mounted).