Hi Chuck,
Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
  I found the section "400 nsec delays" an
interesting read,
 particularly  the bit about reading the status register five times.
 
http://wiki.osdev.org/ATA_PIO_Mode
 --Chuck 
You are completely right, but the drive is selected always as this is a
"one drive only" implementation. The same drive-selection-magic would
otherwise also apply to the "Read Sector Buffer" command which works
without any error.