The server boots. I wish I could tell you that I immediately knew what was wrong when I started to debug my non-booting problem but that would not be true.
I started the process by disconnecting everything extraneous and attempting to boot the machine. This was not that easy because of course, I had properly dressed up all of the cables, routing them to minimize airflow disruptions. This meant I had to clip all of the cable ties.
All I wanted to hear was the customary beep that comes out during POST. Nothing.
My next thought was that I had possibly inserted the RAM sticks into the wrong slots. The manual is a little confusing on how the dual bank and dual channel setup is supposed to work. The slots are labeled A1, B1, A2, B2. Anyway, after rereading the manual I was convinced that the RAM was correct.
The next option was that the CPU or motherboard was bad. I had now started to google my way around to see if there were other people who had the same problem. There were hundreds of examples of bad builds so the fact that there was so much information did not help me. I then went back to the ASUS (the motherboard manufacturer) website and went through their troubleshooting guide. This did not help me either.
I then went back and stared at the motherboard and realized that the primary 24 pin power connector was not seated completely. I pressed it down so that it was 100% seated and then tried to reboot the machine. It still didn't work.
While surfing around the ASUS site I came across a document that stated P4 CPUs and later needed to connect a four pin power connector in addition to 24 pin connector. This was new. I thought the 24 pin connector was the standard 20 pin connector plus the four pin connector. I looked at the motherboard and sure enough I had that connector. I looked at the power supply and I also had the connector.
I plugged in this additional power connector, rebooted the machine, and it worked like a charm!!!!
I then spent another 20 minutes reconnecting everything else and rebooting to see if everything worked. It did. Lastly I dressed the cables like I had before and put the case on the chassis. I am the proud owner of a new server.
I also configured the BIOS to support RAID 5 for the three 500GB drives and started the download of the latest Ubuntu Server 6.10. I will begin the installation of the software tomorrow. Having never installed Ubuntu Server, tomorrow could be interesting.
Now off to bed and dreaming about what to name the server....