old SK8N asus MB will not see sata drives in bios

[vargis14]

i got my old 940 pin fx-53 running with 1 gig of reg corsair xms ddr400 mem,A bad azz asus geforce mx-440 64 mb agp card .It was that or a skinny small ati rage 128 card.The old girl runs at 2.4ghz stock,Well granny still has some moves left 2665mhz 13x205 with 1.67 volts.Idles at 37-40c loaded 50-60c using a 4800x2 amd stock heatpipe cooler that works very well with some old/new thermaltake white heat paste,that came from thermaltakes first tower cooler with the lightish metallic blue side covers/shrouds and a picture of the empire state building running down the middle of the shroud on both sides.
Its pretty snappy for what it is.With MPHC it plays 720p video at approx 50%cpu usage.I think that because the mx440 64 meg is really doing some HW accel.VLC 2.0 with the same vid is a slideshow.with Google chrome on youtube 720p works fine also but cpu usage moves between 65-80% usage,1080p drops half the frames and pegs usage at 100%.I just might pick up a decent hdcp compliant video card with hdmi out.Newegg has a HIS agp hd4650 1gb card avail for 54$ open box...80 or so for a new one.I am thinking about using this as a HTPC.Wondering if a fast Single core cpu with a new hd4650 agp card will perform better then a am2 3250e 1.5ghz dual core with 780g hd3200 onboard graphics AKA dell zino hd.I know its going to die soon.
So onto the main problem the asus sk8n motherboard will not see a sata drive until you start installing windows you must install a 3rd party promise sata/raid driver.The driver came on the motherboards driver cd but its so old it will only load it from a floppy.So i took the computer into work knowing i would find a floppy cable there.Well found a cable but the drive was dead,grabbed another floppy drive.It lights up and runs but nothing happens so i pull the floppy connectors off and try a 3rd drive that finally worked.reboot system Promise sata searching found 36gbwd hd or something.I go into bios and no HD.This went on for half my workday fri so i end up installing win xp pro on a 20 gig IDE drive"OMG ITS LOUD"so i bring it home and try another 80 gig sata drive.Its detects it in the initial post like before but once i get into the bios and windows its not there.
Any ideas?Its so old google is not much help.thanks

[just brew it!]

Some older motherboards have issues dealing with SATA II/III drives (something about the way they initialize up breaks the speed auto-negotiation on the drive's end). I was under the impression that this problem was more common with VIA chipsets, but I suppose some older nVidia southbridges may be affected as well.

If this is the source of your troubles, you have two options:

- See if there's a way to force the drive to use SATA I protocol. Some drives have a jumper; others may require you to hook the drive up to a system that's able to talk to it, and run a tool to flip a setting in the drive's firmware.

- Use a PCI-based SATA card instead of the onboard ports.

[vargis14]

Great idea JB....a pci sata card.
What do you think about the fast single core fx-53 with a hd4650 vs the hd zino 1.5ghz dual core with hd 3200 onboard?
Worth dumping 70$ into this old girl or should i just get a 960t quad core with a 880g hdmi hd4250IGP MB and ram for about $200.I live by a microcenter and the 960t that might be unlocked to 6 cores is 109$ plus $50 off a motherboard when bought together.
I know choice#2 is much better,but money is tight right now.
Starting to think ill use this old thing at work till the hd zino dies.After all it is much much faster then the 2400xp i have next to my toolbox now.
Once the zino hd Dies,the wife will allow a upgrade of 200$.....humm thinking of ways to kill zino Accidentally on purpose.I do have a 80 lb 6.5 month old female great dane and the zino is on the floor.Perhaps ill just stomp on it right in the area of power connector then say dog tripped me:)