i went to boot it and... everything works! installing debian now.
oh, one thing that doesn't work: i didn't hook up all the case lights.... i hate those.... so hard to figure out what goes where, and the motherboard manual isn't much help, either. i guess i'll figure that out later.
system so far:
866 P3, 256 MB memory, 50x cd-rom (secondary master), 18 gb IBM drive (primary master.. boot disk), 60 gb maxtor (secondary slave), 60 gb ibm (primary slave). the two 60 gbs will be in a raid-1 array.
i'm going to need to buy a new sound card, since my old one was ISA (heh) and I don't have any ISA slots on this motherboard.
okay, enough blabbing.... back to installin'