Yes, this is the same machine that had the reported problem previously and still booted. Yes, the 'no hard drive detected' was seen on all connections. Given it was reporting no hard drive found on all of them and still booted then there was a BIOS issue.
I think that it is starting to boot from the hard drive because the Windows XP screen initially pops up and appears to be loading then the 'no hard drive detected' message appears in DOS format. Previously it then completed booting up in windows from that message but now after the message I get a screen to select how I want to boot the computer and the cycle repeats endlessly.