Ancient 500 meg HDD problems

[Aglar]

I recently built a PC out of a bunch of old stuff I had lying around (AMD K-6 233, etc). Anyway, I was able to install a distro of linux called IPCop on it (it's a router/firewall distro). Problem is, when I try to boot I get either a column of "L"s running down the left side of the screen, or "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". Doubt there's anything I can do, but any thoughts would be appreciated.

Update:
The problem isn't the HDD. I tried a newer 6.4 GB one and had the same problem. Tried a new IDE cable too, no dice. The problem occurs with other linux distros, as well as FreeBSD. Any ideas?

[This message has been edited by Aglar (edited November 16, 2002).]

[Emon]

The HDD controller could be dead. Do you have another IDE or PCI controller lying around?

[Aglar]

If that were the case, would I still be able to install the OS, though? Because that much works, it's just the bootup that always fails. I'll also try the secondary IDE channel, that may work. Failing that, I do have an incredibly old ISA I/O card with serial, parallel, floppy, and one IDE channel, but for the life of me I can't remember how to use the damned thing. I could always try playing around with that as a last resort. Thanks.

[Emon]

Hmm, you might be able to install it, not sure. Is it possible that the portion of the controller (if there is one) that controlls booting and such is dead? That's just about all I can think of.

Oh, one more thing... in CMOS, is the HDD in your boot order?

[Aglar]

Yeah, I tried lots of combinations, including:
A, C
SCSI, C, A
SCSI, A, C
CDROM, C, A
CDROM, A, C
C, A
and C only.
Same result.

[This message has been edited by Aglar (edited November 16, 2002).]

[Malus]

Have you even bothered to see if Windows works?

[Aglar]

Yeah, it did a while ago. Different HDD, though.

[This message has been edited by Aglar (edited November 16, 2002).]