Old computer Hell

[Gullible Jones]

I'm setting up a "new" computer for my mom, a Dell XPS R350.

(She's using a 120 MHz Apple PowerPC right now. And in case you're wondering, my dad doesn't want to buy her a better machine and I don't have the money; if I did, I'd get something nicer than this rubbish secondhand Dell.)

Anyway, I used the guts of another Dell, an Optiplex GX-1, to upgrade it, plus some other stuff. Right now it's got:

- A P3 Katmai 450 MHz processor
- twin 30 GB Quantum Fireball hard drives (which I plan to use in software RAID1)
- A CD and a Zip drive
- A Turtle Beach sound card of some sort
- A Matrox Millenium 2 PCI video card
- 448 MB of PC100 RAM

The original setup (which worked fine):

- The P3 Katmai processor
- One 4 GB and one 6 GB hard drive
- The CD and Zip drives
- The Turtle Beach sound card
- An ATI Rage 128 video card
- What appeared to be a TV card
- 384 MB of PC100 RAM

Those are the only changes I made.

Anyway, right now it's failing to recognize *any* of the IDE drives. Not just the new hard drives, but also the CD and Zip drives, which worked fine before; the BIOS says there's nothing hooked up to either IDE channel. The only thing it can boot from is the floppy drive.

I double-checked the jumpers on the IDE drives and they're set right; I made sure the IDE ribbons were plugged in correctly (they were, despite not being polarized ::) ); I tried booting without the extra RAM (some old computers can't handle more than 384 MB); I looked in the BIOS to see if there was a way to manually configure the drives... Nada. I'm stumped. The only thing I can think of is ESD, which I'm hoping this isn't.

Any advice?

Edit: N/M, the notches on the IDE ribbon plugs were on the wrong side.:-\ Weird.