It has been a while since I last revisited this topic. It is not BIOS limitation, but a hardware limitation of what is available that will fit and still have a PATA interface.
There is a Toshiba 1.8” 80GB drive that works (according to this forum, not my own experience). Not sure of the availability.
I think there may be a KingSpec PATA 128GB SSD available. I have one of their 64GB SSD drives installed. It is excellent.