Micro BTX
Dimensions: 10.5 × 10.4 inches (strange, if that was true, larger than normal)
MCH (northbridge): ATI RC410 Rev. A12
ICH (southbridge): ATI SB450 Rev. A13
Primary IDE connector
Secondary IDE connector
Four Serial ATA connectors
*******
I tried doing a few searches, to see if there was a SATA ATAPI problem,
but don't see anything there.
If you can see the identity text string in the BIOS, for the optical
drive, then the cabling is probably working. You could change
motherboard ports, as part of your testing (use a different SATA plug).
The ATI Southbridge, might have two separate logic blocks to control
the four ports or something. But that's a long shot.
Power shouldn't be a problem. An optical drive draws lots
of power, when you have a disc in the tray, but not so much
when it's sitting there idle, with an empty tray. Even at
240W, I doubt your computer was "falling over", because
of an extra 5 watts max to run an empty optical drive.
So I'm stumped.
Some chips, like the VIA ones, have problems when
SATA II drives are plugged into the motherboard. But at most,
if something like that was happening (300MB/sec device
can't negotiate properly with 150MB/sec Southbridge),
the device simply wouldn't be recognized, and you'd still be
able to boot.
Does the motherboard have a RAID setting for the SATA ports ?
Do you already have a RAID array connected ?
Don't make too many changes to the BIOS settings, without
first writing down the settings that work. If you change the
BIOS settings, it could prevent booting because the OS drivers
would no longer match.
By the way, exactly what does this mean ?
"will not go any further than the boot up window"
The BIOS is in control at first, and then at some point,
your OS takes over, and may put an animation on the screen,
while files are loading. In some cases, if you enable
"boot logging" in the OS, perhaps from Windows Safe Mode,
you might get to see more activity on the screen.
If it was my machine, I'd slap a Linux LiveCD in it, and
see if the LiveCD would boot or not. Even a Windows Installer CD
would do. If it did, then I'd know the hardware was good. I use
both OSes here, as the occasion arises.
If you really thought it was a power issue, and you had
some kind of bootable optical media, you could try unplugging
the hard drive power and data cables (with the power off).
When SATA optical first came out, there were a few issues.
This table, is an example of the "bleeding edge" compatibility
at the time. But things should be better now. Too bad there
are no ATI chipsets here.
"px-716sa motherboard compatability listing"
http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.php/faq?fileid=7&task=download
Paul