System freezes at end of BIOS load, right before OS handoff

[revival]

Hello all,
I recently acquired an ASUS AV7133 mobo (KT133) chipset.
Dropping in a Athlon 1500+ and 32mb pc133 ram I had sitting around, the system boots up as would be expected. If I add a drive it properly recognizes the drive, which is a reassuring sign.
Problem seems to be after the initial POST screen when must of the system hardware is listed, instead of the BIOS passing the bootup process to a boot device, the system seems to freeze. The cursor keeps on blinking, but the system doesnt respond to ctrl+alt+del, or any other keys. Before this state I can access the BIOS settings, make changes, and have them saved.
I've tried booting off a hard drive, cd drive, and floppy. I was thinking a BIOS update might help the situation, but since I can't even boot off a floppy, this seems to be a no go, unless someone knows how I could get around that.

I'm confused as to what to try from here. I'm booting with the bear minimum, everything seems to start up fine, and then I just get the same 100% repeatable freeze. All the other hardware has been tested in other systems, and works fine. I've tried swapping spare parts that I have, but seems to make no difference. Any ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated.

[Gecko]

Try disconnecting all ide devices, hard drive, floppy and cd drive then try booting
If you get a no os found error then it one of the above or the ide cable for that device.
If you get the same freeze up then most likely it’s the motherboard.

[icecube]

Another thing that comes to mind is clearing the CMOS.

[Un4g1v3n]

Or maybe even the switch setting on the HD itself?

(You know, those little pins on the back of it where you put the jumper thingy...)

[Kestrel]