The patch described by the following excerpt from ChangeLog-2.6.24-rc1
eventually causes a "irq X: nobody cared" error after a while:
commit 
99c9e0a1d6cfe1ba1169a7a81435ee85bc00e4a1
Author: Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>
Date:   Fri Oct 5 15:55:12 2007 -0400
    [SCSI] sym53c8xx: Make interrupt handler capable of returning IRQ_NONE
After this happens, the kernel disables the IRQ, causing the SCSI card
to stop working until the next reboot.  The problem is caused by the
interrupt handler returning IRQ_NONE instead of IRQ_HANDLED after
handling an interrupt-on-the-fly (INTF) condition.  The following patch
fixes the problem.
Signed-off-by: Tony Battersby <tonyb@cybernetics.com>
Acked-by: Matthew Wilcox <willy@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>
        istat = INB(np, nc_istat);
        if (istat & INTF) {
                OUTB(np, nc_istat, (istat & SIGP) | INTF | np->istat_sem);
-               istat = INB(np, nc_istat);              /* DUMMY READ */
+               istat |= INB(np, nc_istat);             /* DUMMY READ */
                if (DEBUG_FLAGS & DEBUG_TINY) printf ("F ");
                sym_wakeup_done(np);
        }