Thanks for the idea!

Worked for me with Mandrake also. Unfortunately, the installation program didn't ask me which disk to boot from, and I erroneously assumed that since I was installing to the second drive that it would insert the boot loader on that drive also. Wrong. I caught it later before finishing the install, but not before it screwed up the MBR on C: Anyway, I changed the boot order in BIOS, so all works OK now, and I just have to fix the C: drive boot partition in case I ever remove the second HD.