Is jmicron PATA supported hardware?

My roommate bought a new desktop, and came to me with an Ubuntu installation problem. We're both stumped at this point.
Here's a basic scenario we're unable to solve:
One PATA drive attached to a Core 2 Duo motherboard with a Jmicron chipset. 7.10 installs smoothly, and asks for a restart. On reboot,
grub gives an error 25 before a menu appears. I put the install CD back in and discover that it can't find any of the partitions!

After 7.10 install, but before boot, partitions exist:
ubuntu@ubuntu:/mnt/root$ ls -l /dev/sd*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 2007-11-11 17:14 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 2007-11-11 17:15 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 2007-11-11 17:15 /dev/sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 3 2007-11-11 23:21 /dev/sda3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 4 2007-11-11 23:21 /dev/sda4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 2007-11-11 17:24 /dev/sdb
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 17 2007-11-11 16:40 /dev/sdb1

And they mount:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ mount
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
tmpfs on /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devshm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/root type ext3 (rw)

And have the stuff you expect in them:
ubuntu@ubuntu:/mnt/root$ ls
bin cdrom etc initrd lib media opt root srv tmp var
boot dev home initrd.img lost+found mnt proc sbin sys usr vmlinuz

Broken grub, so back to the live CD, and chroot, right?

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb

Where have my partitions gone? Also note that sdb and sda switched drives =(

Is there any chance of getting Ubuntu on there or is he just screwed?