Number of partitions on sata HDs limited to 15 by libATA

Well, I learnt something today.
The older Pata HDs apparently could be divided into unlimited partitions but the newer (and soon to be exclusive) Sata drives limit you to a maximum of 15 partitions.
Yes, I knew about the 15 partition stuff but didn't know that there are still some distros that support non-libATA stuff and therefore let you go higher than 15 in the number of partitions.
From what I can see, openSUSE 10.3 and Mandriva 2008-1 are in this group.
It is suggested by ardent multibooters that you should put swap partition and the / and /home for all distros that use libATA on the first 15 partitions. Then put the non-libATA OSes on the higher number slices.
I learnt a lot from this thread and, indeed, this seems a useful forum for multibooters although the few threads I read involved some heavy detailed stuff.