LinuxQuestions.org - Linux Installation SATA

Greetings

I just bought a new computer.
But I'm having trouble installing Linux.

Here are the specs:
Motherboard ASUS P5V800-MX (INTEL Socket 775 > VIA P4M800)
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz
1 GB RAM
160 GB 7200 rpm SATA
DVDRW Dual Layer
(no floppy drive, which unfortunetely is very important in installation issues)

He came with windows XP installed. I really need to install some linux distro on it, so
I started by resizing windows NTFS partition to make unallocable space for linux.
(I don't know if this is enought, because I've heard sometimes that it's necessary to create
partitions for swap, boot, etc - I just did the resize because I thought Fedora installation
CDs would take care of the rest)

First Try:
Then I boot from Fedora 3 first installation CD.
However, I don't even get to that stage. When the system boots from the Fedora CD,
no hard drive is detected. He gives me the chance to load device drivers, but I don't
have any SATA hard drive installation disks, and even if I had I don't have the floppy
driver.

Second Try:
I then try a more recent distro, SUSE 10 evaluation version. First problem was the
message "Cool PC, running 32 bit software on 64-bit computer" and it goes to "manual mode".
(my pc isn't 64 bits).
Then I still have a chance to look for hard disks, but none is detected.

Bios Settings:
The Maxtor SATA disk is detected as THIRD IDE MASTER. And the DVDRW as SECONDARY IDE MASTER.
I don't know if this is good for linux.

First Try to Fix:
I read that a similar problem could be fixed if I change BIOS settings of SATA disk to
Compatible or Legacy Mode. However, in BIOS, the only reference to SATA that I find
(other that displaying it in THIRD IDE MASTER) is under Chipset->SouthBridge->SATA
with Disabled/SATA/RAID as options. And none of them work.

Second Try to Fix:
I read an how-to consisting of several steps like: installing same distro on an IDE driver,
downloading kernel source files, Maxtor SATA drivers for Linux, Compiling the Kernel,
Saving to floopy, Boot from CD, and go from there (something like that).
However I don't have the hardware resources (another disk or computer, nor floppy).
Furthermore, as you can see, with my linux "know how" I would hardly be able to perform
all those steps.

I really need help. I'm going dispair and frustrated. One of the main reasons I bought
the computer was to be able to dual boot windows and linux and start learning something.

Thanks Beforehand,
Pedro Vaz