k, so i'm putting together my old p75mhz and less old pII450mhz into a new pc.

So, i get everything hooked up; IDE cables of the HD/cdrom/disk drive in place etc.; but when i boot i get a "162-system options not set" message.

I've been doing a little search for this on the web and some ppl adviced others with the same prob to go into BIOS and set it to default settings. I tried that one, didn't work.

Now; for the record: i SUCK at them slave/master settings so i'll give an overview of how they're connected to the mobo:

->HD: alone on IDE cable, set to master
->cdrom: alone on an IDE cable, set to slave

could this piece of amateur work be the cause? Or should i go and mess around with the BIOS settings after all?

If they're alone on their IDE cable, they should be set as master.

IF there are two devices on an IDE cable, one must be set as master, one must be set as slave.

So, you did it wrong. I don't think that should stop your computer from booting, though. Still, it's worth a try.

If you keep having issues after fixing that, post back and I might try looking into your error a bit more.

lol...you don't wanna screw with networking in DOS. It's a freakin' pain in the ass.

I'm thinking your CD-ROM might be bad or something. That's all I can really think of. Have you tried clearing your bios by resetting the jumper?

The jumpers on the cdrom are all definetely correct, yes?

btw, LOL at the cdrom master, HD slave thing. hahah

honestly have no idea why i even look in this forum, it's all gibberish to me...

It's true, i always read stuff here too, and i think the number of times i understood what the hell they were talking about can be count on one hand.