Help me out here...

[Masamune]

I just got my new comp parts in, and everything is going to hell. I get everything hooked up and I get to the BIOS screen and I realize I have a loose IDE cable in my cd drive. I can't install an OS without my cd drive, now can I? =o I hook it back up and restart. This time, no BIOS. Nothing displays on the screen. Little help please? =(

[Ich]

Did you maybe bump something loose when plugging in the IDE cable? Go back in a wiggle all the wires to make sure they're connected tightly.

And there are OSes that fit onto floppies...

[Masamune]

Silly me. My agp card was loose. ^_^ But now I lost my windows 98 boot disk. But fortunately, Glenn is sending me his as I type. He also helped me a bunch last night with this problem. I also hada couple backwards IDE cables that he found. =D But for some reason, the paper that came with my motherboard combo doesn't want me to use my old hard drive and just boot off that. Didn't give a reason though. Anyone might know why? I already formatted my HD, I'm just curious to why it instructed me to not use my old OS.

[Glenn the Great]

Silly me. My agp card was loose. ^_^ But now I lost my windows 98 boot disk. But fortunately, Glenn is sending me his as I type. He also helped me a bunch last night with this problem. I also hada couple backwards IDE cables that he found. =D But for some reason, the paper that came with my motherboard combo doesn't want me to use my old hard drive and just boot off that. Didn't give a reason though. Anyone might know why? I already formatted my HD, I'm just curious to why it instructed me to not use my old OS.

IDE connectors are very poorly designed, seeing as how it is possible to plug them in backwards. The rule of thumb is that when you're working inside the case, the red wire goes towards you. I've already told this to Masa last night but I'm just repeating it for those who aren't used to putting computers together from scratch.