Ok, I recieved an old computer from a friend. One of those "you can have it, just get it out of here" computers.
Its ancient, but I figured it would make a great linux box.
Sys Specs:
Mobo:Amptron PM-7900A
Intel i430VX PCI chipset
BIOS date 1996L
Pentium 120mhz
24mb on 2 pairs of simms(price tag of $1099.00 on one pair :) )
Creative Labs 8x CD-Rom, on an IDE controller card
AC22100 Western Digital 2gig
I threw in an old ATI rage pro card
Win95 is installed on it.

The main problem I'm having with it is Hard drive does not play nicely when anything else is attached to the motherboard IDE channels. The bios detects it when the jumper on the HD is sec across the Master and Slave top pins, but will not detect it just set as Master. I want to get rid of the IDE card and just put the CD-ROM drive on the motherboard.

I figured a BIOS update would help out some, but for some reason it won't update. went to amptron.com and got the latest update for it, created a boot disk, booted it up and ran the updater and it will just sit at 0% on the update screen. There is a 12v jumper that has to be enabled to update the bios. I've tried it with that jumper open and closed with still no luck.

Is it possible that the chip just won't take an update? Any ideas here on how to get that updated or even how to get the CD-ROM/HD to both sit on the motherboard IDE channels would be great.