Is this possible? I haven't had a floppy drive in 5 years. Is it possible to install the silicon image SATA drivers while installing XP. I really dont want to have to buy one just for this.

Perhaps a bootable USB flash key?

I have a USB floppy but the XP install will not see the drive. You will need to make a custom install cd using the slipstream instructions. The combination of these two sites should get you going. I would strongly recommand slipstreaming XP2 as this will greatly speed up your install/configure times.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp
http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html

Alas not it seems, whilst it can see it as a drive to install XP on, it'll only load device drivers off a floppy.

It looks like slipstreaming is going to be the only solution, but that's something to try tomorrow I think.

odd, i've had no problems when the SATA is on the motherboard, the bios handles it all. Installing drivers for RAID cards is a right pain. I can't believe that server 2k3 STILL relies on making floppies for the installation of drive hardware. How freakin difficult can it be to load the driver off CD? Sometimes fitting the drivers on a floppy is difficult in itself

Plain SATA works on the motherboard without needing special drivers because it is emulating a plain IDE controller. You still need the drivers if you want to use the SATA specific features however.

It doesn't appear to have a legacy mode, everything that turned up after a little googling says you either need to slipstream the drivers in or have a floppy drive.

As an aside, I find it unbelievable that it is easier to install XP on Virtual PC under OS X than it is on a run of the mill x86 box.

I prefer nLite for doing slipstreamed Windows disks. Makes the process much faster, especially when such a thing is likely to be done only once or twice.