BIOS and GRUB haywire

I had difficulty installing a package (Sylpheed-Claws), which broke
some dependancies for X Windows beyond my ability to repair. So, I
did a fresh install of FC5. This time, however, I opted to have grub
install not to the MBR but to /dev/hda. This was a critical error on
my part, which, I think, led to some serious problems.

After the fresh install I ran yum update, useing the anaconda-type
interface to install Sylpheed-Claws, which worked very well, better
than yum or even yum extender. (Nothing broke.)

I then edited /home/hosts and ran "service xinetd restart" and
"service network restart", then rebooted. On reboot the screen was
filled with "GRUB", at least one hundred times, but not an infinite
loop. I rebooted, and got a message about no floppy in drive A,
except that there's no floppy drive. There's hda and hdb, plus a
CD-ROM and CD-RW, but no floppy.

I rebooted again, but am now just getting a blank screen. It took me
a bit to recall that this computer used the "del" key to bring up the
BIOS settings, I'd been pressing the function keys.

When the computer boots now I'm just getting a blank screen, totally
black. Disconnecting the monitor gives a message about "no signal",
it's not the monitor.

I can't get into the BIOS settings, no matter if I press "del" or not.
The lights indicate that two CD-ROM drives are being accessed,
repeatedly, in a loop, but putting a bootable CD into either drive
doesn't result in anything happening.

My conjecture is that it's related to grub, as it's a boot problem,
and some sort of interplay with the BIOS settings. Is this a hardware
problem? I removed the battery for a bit, but that had no result.



thanks,

Thufir

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