Problem with Precision 410 - can only boot from floppy

[brian]

Hi folks,

Got a goofy problem with my Precision 410 which is running Mandriva 2006.

I came to reboot it yesterday morning and it wouldn't boot, insisted it
could find no boot device. I have the SCSI interface disabled, and
there's a Silicon Image ATA/133 card in there with three hard drives and
a CD-ROM hanging from it. Looking at the boot sequence listed in the
BIOS setup, the only bootable device is the floppy drive. However, it
used to boot just fine from the drives on the ATA/133, and I'm about 99%
sure that it used to list the floppy AND the first hard drive in the
bootable devices. There's nothing in the exclude list, and the only
thing in the third section is 'system BIOS devices'.

I've tried dismounting the ATA/133 and hanging all the drives on the
MoBo IDEs (no change). I've tried hanging a spare small drive on the
MoBO with the ATA/133 still disconnected, and tried to install Mandriva
to that. Nope, still can't see the hard drive.

Last chance - I swapped out the ATA/133 for *two* other controllers -
another ATA/133 and an old Promise ATA/66. Still couldn't see the hard
drives.

Anyone got any ideas, please?

Thanks,

Brian.