Have you ever seen this motherboard successfully boot an IDE hard drive from it's onboard controller?
Is the BIOS configured to boot a CDROM or floppy which you have provided, or is it trying to boot from one of the hard drives? It might be freezing up because of whatever's on the drive.

I don't have any great ideas, but for whatever it's worth, try simplifying the configuration as much as possible. Reduce to just one hard drive, and verify the master/slave/CS jumpering. For now I'd probably jumper the drive explicitly as master (and that drive should be at the end of the cable). If this doesn't help, move the cable to the other IDE channel.
Remove all but a single VGA card - something might be causing a resource conflict with the onboard drive controller. And if that doesn't help, try moving that VGA card to a different slot.
If you haven't already, make sure the drives work correctly in another machine.

Some things to try:
- Clear all the CMOS values (using the clear CMOS jumper first, then the load default values setting).
- Make sure that your HDD is properly configured (= check all the jumpers) and empty. If it had a system previously installed, it may not be able to boot with your new computer (it happens when you switch CHS/LBA or RAID configurations).
- Try to boot from a Linux live CD (I use Puppy Linux or Knoppix), or from Hiren's Boot CD Windows XP. Then, try to access your HDD (and verify it via MHDD or Victoria). If it can see the contents, you're clear to install any new OS.

We assume that you have checked to verify the bios revision in the
first post screens, so you are certain that the 2nd bios chip has
been updated with the later bios (whose version you did not tell us,
and whether it is an AWARD bios).
You said it detects the (80GB) hard drives 'correctly' - does this mean
you can see the drive maker/model info (which you did not tell us) ?

Try connect (a single) 80GB drive using a 40 wire (not 80 wire) IDE cable.
Things to try if the above doesn't work;
I agree then proceed with previous advice; "Reduce to just 1 hard drive,
and verify ...jumpering...Remove all but a single VGA card...clear CMOS"
(for bios in 2nd Bios chip), and I would add have not more than 256MB
of RAM installed.
(If it is not too inconvenient, perhaps you could fdisk and format the
empty 80GB drive(s) to their full LBA size on another computer.)
_EDIT*{I think that if the 80GB drives have been previously fdisk'd and
_formatted in C/H/S, attempts to access the drives would fail using LBA
_(even when later using an updated 'LBA aware' bios). }
If the above doesn't work, then, using the 2nd Bios,
(Again, connect (a single) 80GB drive using a 40 wire IDE cable.)
in the Bios screens, try setting the mode to Auto or try LBA if such
exists. Try setting UDMA, if such exists.

If the above doesn't work;
Try fdisk and format one of the the 80GB drive to less than 64GB, but more
than 32GB size, LBA, on another computer, then connect that (single) drive
using a 40 wire IDE cable.

*(I'm really missing the 'strikethrough' code used on other
phpBB boards...)

Might be completely useless information, yet the only time I had this problem was with bad daemon tools 3.47 installation. I know this program is often the reason for such a behavior. Just FYI.