Yay for Linux!

So I received an old 650ish MB PATA hard drive from work. I've always wanted to try out Linux, so I figured I would try installing it on this new drive and dual-booting an old Pentium 2 desktop I have at home, currently running XP Home but lacking any important data, so I feel safe in screwing around with it's boot.ini and whatnot.

DSL is installed on a single, disk-wide linux partition on the old PATA drive (hdd1 for those of you in the know) while Windows (hda1) and a data drive (hdb1) occupy spots on the primary PATA chain.

Anywho, I've followed instructions I found online and gotten to the point where I have the NT bootloader asking me which OS I want to use. If I select XP everything boots up dandy. However, if I select DSL, it just hangs. I've realized that the instructions I've followed directed how to dual boot when linux and XP are installed on seperate partitions on the same physical disk, not different partitions on seperate disks. Everything I've found since has spoken of over-writing the MBR with GRUB or some such. I will be heading off to bed shortly, to work on this again tomorrow after work, but any advice/links to detailed instructions online of what I need to do to get everything working fine would be greatly appreciated!