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HD ribbons are the older kind, though.

Look at the specifications for that new motherboard ASUS M2N-SLI SPECIFICATIONS:

Expansion Slots

PCI Express x16 2

PCI Express x1 2

PCI Slots 3

Storage Devices

PATA 1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max

SATA 3Gb/s 7

SATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5

This motherboard only supports one PATA bus allowing for two IDE devices, the master and slave on that bus. Your old motherboard almost certainly has support for two PATA buses, allowing for four IDE drives. If you have 3 or more PATA devices, they won't all fit. However old PATA disks are of very little value. I would not waste much effort or money trying to get them to fit.

Power supply connectors are most all about an inch wide.

This tells me little. Looking at the picture of the motherboard on newegg, I see two Molex (white chunky plastic) connectors. There is a 2x2, and a 12x2, which Asus describes on their site Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe Specification as the 24-pin ATX Power connector, and the 4-pin ATX 12V Power connector.

I used to prefer AMD just to give Intel some competition. And, at the time, the DUAL CPU was among the heftier setups.

Now, I’m happy for speed and reliability—whichever though might have a slight preference for AMD. What do you suggest?

As I stated in a previous post above, I've been using Intel Core 2 Duo this last year. Previously, I mostly used AMD.

My ATI and sound cards are all new—less than 4 months old. Shouldn’t they fit a new system?

What kind of bus is the sound card -- PCI, ...? If it is PCI or PCI Express (see above table), it has a home.

I don't know what an ATI card is -- no comment on that one.

I suppose it’s hard to say about the RAID CARD?

You won't need a RAID CARD - it's built in to this motherboard. See above table.

Ah - on second thought, you might continue to use the raid card (is it PCI or PCI Express, not the old ISA bus?) and continue to connect to additional old PATA IDE drives that way.

I ASSUME it’s still cheaper to build one’s own in terms of bang for buck?

It's more fun, more flexible and one can get higher quality parts. But if one accounts for the fair market value of ones labor, it's impossible to compete with a room full of under paid Chinese laborers.

I still haven’t found out if I can replace my SpySweeper with the free SpyBot. Is that okay? If so, I won’t renew my SpySweeper subscription which comes due in a few days.

Excellent comments. THANKS TONS.

The RAID card fits the same slots as the New

ATI —All In Wonder was what I originally had . . . video, sound etc. This version runs

ATI CATALYST. I forget what ATI stands for . . .

Upgraded to a new medium high end similar card. Was standard connector bus for modern systems as I understood it from the Best Buy salesperson.

So you are now happier with Intel than you used to be with AMD. Good to know.

Would like to have maximum number of drives possible on the system. So would like the RAID card to fit but not the end of the world if it doesn’t.

Don’t they make mother boards with more hard drive connectors? Strange.

Thanks for your kind bother to comment.