Just a point here about the ribbon (data) cable to the floppy disk drive -
there doesn't seem to be a standard setting for the orientation of the
ribbon cable where it meets the floppy.

In almost every other case, HDD or CD, the ribbon is connected so that the
red wire is closest to the power socket.  And the red wire leads to pin1.

But on some brands of floppy, it's the other way around.

The best way to tell is simply to try it, as it doesn't seem to cause any
damage to have it on the wrong way, briefly anyway.

If the floppy drive light comes on at bootup, and remains on, the ribbon is
the wrong way around.

In your case Kevin, it doesn't sound as though the BIOS is set to boot from
a floppy at all, and this can be changed, of course.

It also sounds as though you have a mobo with Raid\Ata ports (4 IDE ports
instead of 2) and because you have nothing connected to these ports, the
BIOS for the Raid\Ata ports isn't loaded at bootup, and it's telling you so.

This is normal, but if the message is a nuisance, you'll need to turn off
the Raid\Ata option in the BIOS.

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kevin Jones"
Subject: [PCBUILD] failed boot-up
>
>
> I recently built a new computer but everytime I turn it on, it searches
for
> boot information, but it never finds any.  I made a system disk and put it
> in the floppy, but it doesn't detect it for some reason.  Everthing is
> working properly, the dvd is on, the floppy is on, the hard drive is
> working, so i'm not sure what the problem is.  Also, before it searches
for
> the boot info, it says "detecting"[then a little time passes] and then it
> says that my bios is not installed becasue there are no devices attached
to
> it.  I'm not sure what that means and if that is part of the problem.

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