Time for an update.
Tried everything a home user would have available and couldn't get the Dell windows XP disk that came with the computer to recognize any hardrive. Forget about creating a cobbled up disk by streaming in SATA drivers as that is way beyond a home user's knowledge.
Tried downloading Nvidia drivers (including SATA) on another computer and putting them on a flashdrive. The BIOS recognizes the flashdrive but the XP installation had no way of recognizing how to load them. Finally downloaded a clean Dell XP SP2 installation off the internet using Limewire and presto XP was installed.
Leftover problem was that the new windows system didn't have internet (wrong or missing drivers on the Dell driver disk) Used another computer to download the proper drivers and solved that problem. At least you can install needed drivers once you get Windows running.
I don't know what is wrong with the original Dell installation disk but I suspect that Dell may package these with different drivers for different Dell models and the one I initially tried using didn't turn on my SATA drives for loading (in spite of the fact that they show up in the BIOS)