It sounds like you motherboard is broken, as I doubt both of your harddisks were fried at the same time. What you could try is to remove one and see what happens when you start with just one.

If that doesn't help, I'd try looking for a different pc to test your disks. Perhaps a friend wouldn't might borrowing his pc for 30 mins (if you've got 15 years behind you, I'm sure one or two might owe you a favor or two for the times you fixed their problems).
Attach your HD as slave, fire up the pc, check bios if its reading the new HD. Then boot normally, although safe mode is preferred, and check your files.

In any case good luck solving this puzzle

Edit: nevermind,.. just saw you fixed the problem