Pete: if you really don't care about the data on the hard drive (i see you're willing to just replace the HD with a new one) then why don't you try formatting it? you could probably do it set as slave. :-/

as for the bios thing, i did a simple google search and found something that might help some: http://labmice.techtarget.com/articles/BIOS_hack.htm

the answer can usually be found with some good ol' googling.