Yesterday I installed the latest 4.4 kernel (apt-get install linux-image-4.4-bananian) for Bananian 16.04 (all patches applied) on a Banana Pi R1. The install resulted in the "ATA not ready" messages I recall being present prior the inclusion of the power patch referred to in this topic. The net result appears to be as before the inclusion of this patch: the disk isn't getting enough power to complete its initialisation. Reverting to the 3.4 kernel fixed the problem.
When using bananian-config, the option to select the R1 as the target hardware is no longer available. Instead it reports that various hardware configurations are now supported by the device tree, or words to that effect.
If this is a known problem, can anybody point me in the right direction? If not, I'm happy to help in the diagnosis and resolution.
I'm using a Western Digital spinning disk.