This gave me a clue. I bypassed a board that has two IDE ports and went directly to a single IDE port on the mobo - and now it's working...cp wrote:i've been reading this thread for a while now. look, the thing you need to do is:
connect a HDD jumpered as master or slave to the primary ide port. connect a cd-rom jumpered as master or slave to the secondary ide port. power the machine on and enter the bios. now your hdd and the cdrom should already show up somewhere in the bios. if something doesn't auto detect the drive in the bios. if it still doesn't show up: replace it with a working one.
select cd-rom as 1st boot device. exit and save the changes you made. insert the installation cd and boot it. that's all.
I am going to try it with the Maxtor HDD now.
Many thanks both of you for your patience and good advice...