having trouble with a asus black pearl

hey guys.. im helping a friend who bought all these parts for his comp and had no idea how to put them together...no now its up to me..i got everything going well but i got stuck with some weird posts..with no drives in the motherboard (no floppy , hdd, etc) it will post with the P3 1 gig... but when i plug in an ide cable it wont post...with either the floppy or hard drive or vice versa...i was thinkin it was the drivers on the hard drives that i didnt set right but i was thinking that the setup would still post but that the hdd detection would just not detect the hds...but still no post...another thing that was weird was that with just the floppy in the setup wont post either which has stumped me good...any idea freinds? hes had this stuff sitting arounds his house for a good two months or more so i dunno..well any ideas are welcome...thanks for reading