On Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:16:51 -0700 (PDT), klem kedidelhopper
wrote:

I really hope that someone can help me with this. I have a P233 with
American Megatrends

Ancient MB. Get something up to date.

My guess(tm) is that your BIOS and MB are fine. What you probably did
is connect the 2nd hard disk to the first IDE cable, without setting
the jumpers on either your original drive, or the used drive. The
result is that it won't boot. In that state, it will also fail to
display the BIOS screen, as it will be waiting a long time (about 5
minutes) for the drives to come ready, before showing the BIOS. Your
description would be more useful if you would describe what actually
happens when you turn on the machine, rather than what doesn't happen
(i.e. doesn't boot, won't show BIOS, etc).

Also, reversing the ribbon cable connections to the drives are
possible. In some really early machines, that would blow up the IDE
controller on the motherboard. If the drive is really mangled, with a
short between the +5V and +12V lines, it's likely that you just
applied +12V to the motherboard +5V bus, which tends to blow things
up.

If you want to continue this excercise, be sure that your main drive
is backed up. Also, either use the 2nd IDE controller and cable to
test drives, or do what I do, which is to use a USB to IDE cable, and
format it via the USB port. They're about $5 on eBay. Plan on
blowing up a few of them as drives with a short between the +12v and
+5v are likely to blow up the adapter.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558