Building my first PC, and have already had the problem of the floppy drive catching on fire. Replaced floppy, Power Supply, and floppy cable. The floppy drive is definitely properly installed.

During loadup, no matter what I set the BOOT order to in the BIOS (Floppy-CD-Rom-RAID, Floppy-CD-Rom-HDD0, CD-ROM-Disabled, Floppy-Disabled, RAID, HDD0, etc..)
I can't get anything to load. I have tried the Win98 CD, the Win98 Floppy, and Mandrake Linux install CD's. The computer loads up installation and BIOS fine, moves to the RAID controller screen, where it recognizes the two HD's in the RAID-0 array, and sometimes flickers on the white-bordered boxes containing misc computer information followed by some lines of text, but does so too quickly to read. Then the monitor acts as if its not getting a signal from the computer. I think this is the point it should be loading up the Floppy or Hard Disk or CDROM, but instead it hangs (CPU/PSU fans and LED's all running). When it gets to this point, I can't place the computer in StandBy or Power Off (I can at any time before hand), but I can reset.

The CDROMS flicker their LED's for a bit, but don't seem to read anything. The Floppy Drive Light never comes on at any point (but I know there is power going to it, as inverting the cable turns the light on). The Floppy Drive and Cable are brand new, as is the rest of the computer save for the case and one of the case fans.

System:
Abit KX7-333R Motherboard
AMD 2000+XP CPU
2 Seagate Barracuda IV 7200 60 Gb rpm's in a RAID-0 array (RAID is onboard, HD's are properly configured)
Primary Master: Samsung DVD-ROM
Primary Slave: LG CDRW
nothin in secondary IDE
Enermax 431 W power supply.
Samsung 17" 753DF Flat-like screen monitor.

Is the Raid controller an add-on or onboard?

Is it properly configured in BIOS?

Do you really need to use RAID or can you use it just for the extra 2 IDE channels?

RAID is onboard and I'm fairly sure its properly configured in the BIOS. Will try IDE....

I agree, RAID is not really necessary for 99% of home users, and if building your first computer I would strongly advise you to go with standard IDE and don't even think about RAID.

Go into BIOS and disable RAID, try it as standard IDE setup, see if that works better. Also, check the motherboard manual, it should tell you exactly what settings to use. While in BIOS I would set Default CMOS settings, then make sure hard drives are set to autodetect, floppy type is correct, and boot sequence is A;C.

No difference. I think the key here is that the floppy light never goes on, so I suspect the motherboard has some problems. I'm taking in the system next week to my resellers, and hopefully they can isolate the problem...