thanks for your help guys. I think the floppy issue is my lazyness (not installing them properly, I have been resting them on the top of the case/on top of my cd drives, I've just read this can make them burn out)
As for the s-ata controller, well its all new to me, I might not have needed the s-ata controller because it did install without but then as I said it managed to somehow forget about the drive. When I first installed the controller though I managed to get a boot menu (not bios, not raid controller menu, something else which I havent been able to get up again) and boot from the s-ata drive and I got the error then too.
I've managed to find someone who knows where a floppy drive is on a computer (
) and they are going to bring that down to me, if that wont work, then I'll have to use the nlite method, but thats last option for me as I will have to take the cdrw out of the new machine and do some learning.
cheers guys
liam