8051 - IDE hard drive interface problem

Trying to interface an 8051 with and EIDE hard drive. I start by
selecting the master device in the device control register. Then I
wait for the status register to say that the drive is ready and not
busy. For some reason the status register comes back as 0xFF always
and so the busy bit is always high and so my code hangs there waiting
for the drive to stop being busy. It seems simple enough. Is there
some reason why it would say its busy after power up and selecting the
master device?

(bob) wrote in message . com...
Trying to interface an 8051 with and EIDE hard drive. I start by
selecting the master device in the device control register. Then I
wait for the status register to say that the drive is ready and not
busy. For some reason the status register comes back as 0xFF always
and so the busy bit is always high and so my code hangs there waiting
for the drive to stop being busy. It seems simple enough. Is there
some reason why it would say its busy after power up and selecting the
master device?

More details would be very nice. What is an 8051, what harddrive,
what do you mean by interface, system specs, etc.

Maybe can then help,
Aaron