HELP with PDCsata SATA300 "bios not set"

NetBSD 3.1 on an ABit VH6

I installed a Promise SATA 300.  If I have no disks attached to it
the machine boots off of the IDE disk (wd0).  If I attach a disk to
the sata controller it wants to boot from the uninitialized sata
disk.  During the bios boot it says "bios not loaded".  Is there 
some way to initialize the Promise card from NetBSD or do I have to
do that from Windows or Linux?

I think I can install onto the sata disks and get around this but,
I'd like to use the existing IDE drive ... since it's already to go.

Thanks,
Paul