Booting on a SATA HDD only PC

[valyv]

Hello...Linux fans...

I just bought a new PC and decided to install a linux distribution...
I'm new at this so....
I tried so far with livecd distributions like suse live 7.2 and stand alone distributions like fedora core 1.
The new PCc has only 1 HDD ... a SATA drive.
The CDROM is on the primary IDE channel....
The southbridge is VIA VT8237...but the linux drivers provided on viaarena dot com didn't make much sense to me.

The problem: no distribution has detected the HDD so far....and refused to start!

Q1: Does knoppix live cd have the same problem?
Q2: Is there a way to run Linux without connecting an UltraATA hard drive?

Please help me

[UnderScore]

Running an old Linux OS on and new PC is hard. The difficulties you face is just the same as you would face on Windows XP. When installing Windows XP on a brand new PC, you have to install drivers by hand because the old Windows XP CD does not have drivers for the new PC. A possible solution is to run a recent Linux distro. Fedora Core releases every 6 months and current is FC4. That means FC1 is over 18 months old. Suse Live 7.2 is at least 3 years old if not closer to 4 years old.

You have many choices for LiveCDs: Knoppix 3.8.2 or Knoppix 3.9, Kanotix, Damn Small Linux, Ubuntu 5.04 Horay LiveCD, Suse 9.3 LiveCD, Berry Linux based off of Fedora Core, Slax based off of Slackware.