FYI – I also reinstalled the Sil 3132 driver from Dynex (I happen to have the Dynex e-Sata II PCExpress card) and…
Install completed cleanly
Inserted the card and it was recognized (the icon showed up on the menu bar)
Turned on my 500G Seagate FreeAgent drive
Immediate Kernel Panic!
However…. I then rebooted the MacBook Pro (17″ circa 2008 w/32bit EFI)
Snow Leopard now sees the drive and everything is working. This is my Time Machine drive and TM is currently backing up – no errors / panics so far.
So I guess “they” are right – if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again! Best of luck.