drive recogniztion problems

[avghrnydvl]

I bought some parts and built a new machine for me.

I used some older parts to rebuild one of my boys machines.
All of this with no probs.

Now I'm going after a third one...( I've got enough left over for at least one more).

No matter what I do, I can not get the machine ( Compaq Motherboard with the original chip) to recognize the primary hard drive.

I started with two ( 80 gigs each) and I've downloaded a program to get the machine up on the ram. It sees the drive and all the info on it. But no matter how I configure the drives, nothing comes up as the primary hard drive. I've elimated each one individually and on boot up they are each recognized as the seconday. I've tried both cable positions and tried each setting on the back of the drives.

Any ideas? Has anyone seen this before?

Once I get the system to boot from the CD, I can explore the drive all day long. The system just won't recognize it as the primary drive.

 

[avghrnydvl]

I can boot from the cd. Once booted I can see the disk no problem.
Earlier, I had an error on boot up that it couldn't open the drive. I'm just stumped. This is the same RAM, Chip and Board. No Changes on the major parts. I just doesn't make sense.

 

[Nagasama]

if they are old HDDs they will have jumpers that make them slave or master.
if bios sees them as slave, that jumper is in the wrong position. it may say on the HDD what position is what, or i had some old dell drives that you DID NOT USE the jumper at all to make it a primary. try taking the jumpers off completely if you cannot find the info on the drive.