Where to begin... Old motherboard died. I was given a used one:AMD-K6 MMX enhanced 300 mhz. Put the old 168 pin dimms in andthe floppy, cd drive, and 2 hard drives. The primary hard drive
has a triple boot: 1 screwy version of 2000, 1 supposedly clean
version, and a screwy win 98 version. Don't ask. Of course, b/c
everything is donated there's no disks. Have win 98 upgrade disk.

Please keep in mind that I was left with a motherboard and a
chasse and got this far. Still very much in the dark...(this is being posted via an 11 year old Mac w/2400 baud using Lynx!)
I finally got it to boot into AMIBIOS and it's confusing me because
I'm used to Award. I was given a floppy and recall being told
something about it being a boot maybe. I'm getting no bad beeps at
POST. If I choose a win 2k from boot option it says the config
file is missing or corrupt BUT twice it let me into the windows
setup menu before flaking out. I can get a DOS prompt. If I choose win 98 it says
choose command prompt only and run scanreg. I don't see scanreg in
the directory. Sometimes I get the "inaccessible boot device".
What can I do? Is it possible to swap the BIOS chip out or is that
a bad idea? Is the motherboard gone? Is "SMART capable and status BAD" a bad thing? Thank you.

SMART CAPABLE is a function that monitors your hard drives and warns you if they are going downhill (giving you time to backup your data before the hdd's go "boom").

If you have any spare hdd's lying around, I'd try booting with one of those, that should tell you wether it's your mobo that is malfunctioning or your hdd's.

You could also download the diagnostic tools for your hdd's from the manufacturers site and check them out.

That's my 2 cents, I'm sure others will chip in as well...

I second the suggestion to get the disk manufacturers diagnostic utility.

If you can look at the motherboard to find out what brand and model it is you may be able to find a manual that might help with the BIOS settings. The make and model may be writtten somewhere on the board possibly between two of the expansion slots.

Ok. I sorted the drives out. Everything is great but then ithangs on "loading boot record from IDE-1..Ok"

Will search motherboards.org or someplace for a manual but I
still am curious about swapping out the BIOS chip. Most searches
on problems with this motherboard so far are turning up Linux.

I'm debating trying disk manager/fdisk and erasing both hard drives. That
probably wont help.

this is being posted via an 11 year old Mac w/2400 baud using Lynx!

Wow! That's an accomplishment in itself. I've seen the Internet and posted on the forums on a P-60 running win3.11 and a 14,400 modem...I don't want to see it at 2400 baud...

OK, scanreg is a utility available with Windows98 machines, I can't remember if it's available with win2000 or not. It can be accessed using the windows boot menu you mentioned. Scanreg stores 5 backup copies of the Windows registry. By running the utility you can restore any one of those copies at any time, provided the machine will boot to a command prompt and the backups are not corrupted, and the hard drive is functional. I think a win98 boot floppy will work to get to scanreg too. Just a bit more tedious.

When you boot to the boot menu, choose Command Prompt Only and you will finally land at a C:/> prompt. Type:
scanreg_/restore using a space in place of the underscore used here, then press [Enter]. That will run scanreg. You probably won't find it in a directory listing unless you know where to look. It will then show you the choices of registry backups to use, by date. It probably won't solve the problem, (see below) but it won't hurt a thing to try it and you'll know how to use it later if needed.

AMI Bios is different than Award, but not that difficult if you take your time and read the legend, which tells you what keys to use to make changes, switch pages etc. But...I wouldn't tinker in BIOS unlese changes are absolutely necessary.

Finally, and the most important part, probably...from what you posted it sounds like you are trying to use Windows previously installed on a hard drive with a different motherboard. That's probably the number one issue here, due to motherboard specific drivers already installed on the existing copy of windows that belong to a different motherboard. That very frequently causes problems.

The best way to go is a clean install on a freshly formatted hard drive. I'm not sure how Win 2000 will act, but probably 80% of the time Windows 98 will be flaky at best. Scanreg probably won't fix it. That's also the reason for this with win2000:

"If I choose a win 2k from boot option it says the config
file is missing or corrupt"

The config file referred to was designed for a different motherboard, now Windows doesn't see that motherboard and doesn't know what to do about it.

Inaccessible boot device means it can't find a hard drive or floppy to boot to. The suggestion above to try the drive manufacturer's diagnostics software is the first step to figuring that one out.

You can use the windows 98 upgrade CD as a full install, but you have to have the Windows 95 CD to show it to make it work. No need to actually install 95, just show setup that you have the disk..put it in the CD and browse to it...setup should pick up from there, a happy camper, and finish the installation.

You can swap out the BIOS chip, if you can find a replacement, but it probably won't be necessary. If it boots to a boot menu, BIOS is probably OK.

Another thing you can try for the inaccessible boot device problem is swap out the ribbon cable on the hard drives. If a cable is bad it can cause all kinds of grief. Running disk manager/fdisk would wipe out all data on the hard drive, before you do either be aware that you will have to reinstall Windows at that point, no turning back...fdisk would be my choice, it will do an acceptable job, provided the hard drive is in working condition.