please advise first time building pc

mb px865 pe pro intelchipset
cpu fixed , cooling fan mounted
ram in proper slots

one hdd primary master ok.
dvd-rom primary slave ??? will use for booting xp cdrom
dvd r/rw writer secondary master ???
????>>> means not sure of if the setting is ok or not.
elsa gladiac 128mb video card
do i install os first and then install video card?? or vice-versa??
do i need to install MoBo driver first and then dvd-rom, dvd r/rw, floppy etc.??
how do i know if i have a video card built-in mobo?? how to disable it???

any other suggestion is most welcome.thanks to all who reply.

Last question first. You can tell if you have a built in Video card by looking at the connecting sockets on the back of the motherboard. If you have a socket containing 15 holes in three rows, thats video. Its the only socket you will ever see where the connectors are in 3 throws.

If you decide to use an external video card, the built in one will need to be disabled. You motheboard manual will tell you how to do that.

DVD/CD, floppy drivers will get installed as part of the Windows installation. You can install the Motherboard drivers after Windows is installed but you probably wont need them unless you have a specific problem.

You can install the video drivers after the OS is installed. The fact is, you cannot do much of anything till the OS is installed. Initially the video will come up in a low res/low colour that is common to all video cards. Once Windows is up an running you can then install the drivers that came with the video card to give you high res/high colour.

Stuart

If you want to copy CDs and DVDs directly from one drive to the other without writing them on the harddrive first I thing the above setup will be best. Because with the DVD-Rom and burner on different ide cables you can read on one and write on the other at the same time. With the both drives on the same cable the computer has to switch between read and write which leads to a much lower datarate so your buffer can run empty. The same is true with harddrive and burner but it's not that important because you need less time to read from harddrive.

If you don't do that a lot I suggest to put the DVD-Rom as secondary master and the burner as secondary slave. That way you harddrive may work faster (to know for sure you have to test it!). With a new harddrive I guess it's ATA100 or ATA133 while the DVDs work with ATA33. The number after the ATA gives the maximal datatransferrate in MB/sec. and with two devices on the same cable it works with the speed of the slower one.
This doesn't necessarily mean a real difference because as example my Asus A7V133 Raid board also has ATA100 but the maximal transferrate I ever mesured with a 7200rpm harddrive was around 36MB/sec.

BTW:
You can change the DVD drives later because XP will install them automatically on the new place. You may have to do a few changes at the control panel - system and maybe reinstall your burner software but that's all!

About the installation:
-put everything together as you want it
-install XP
-install board drivers if needed (example: onboard sound)
-install the graphic card drivers
-check into "control panel - system - devices" and install the drivers for all devices that aren't properly installed yet!

After all hardware is installed and works you can start to install the additional software.
Don't forget to activate XP!

>> with two devices on the same cable it works with the speed of the slower one <<

Not anymore it doesnt. Since the advent of UDMA this doesnt apply. However, it is faster copying from one controller to another than copying to two disks on the same controller.

Stuart

Well, Stu, I got UDMA drives, and I put a CDROM on same IDE cable with my Harddrive as Master, and my system slowed to the speed of an old 286. Put the ROMS and HDs back on separate cables and it took off again.