will be the boot drive,
For most mobo's, if you are installing XP you must hit the F6 when it is offered. At this point you can then insert the CD that came with the mobo and install the SATA drivers [and SCSI if needed].
This F6 bit occurs very early in the install and only shows for a short time period. Watch for it.
I think that MSI mobo's install the SATA drivers without the need to use the F6 bit.
Don't get confused later during boot, the SATA devices do not show on the normal boot screen, SATA has its own section of the boot process where the drive gets detected and shown.
As for fire wire cards there are many to choose from so a google search may be the way to get a selection. I buy mostly from www.newegg.com, you can go there or any other such site and look at the firewire cards that they offer.
I'm not familiar with sata. I'm building my first system and I don't know if you can run your operating system off of a sata drive or not. If you can, is partitioning and everything different, if so, how?Also, my asus p4p800 e mobo doesn't support ieee 1394 firewire. What PCI firewire card can I buy, which I can hook up my firewire port built into my case to. Thanks for any help anyone can give.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic