You should not have to pay for an IDE cabel as there are a zillion laying around any computer shop, just ask or grab one out of a junker on the side of the road :). Unless its one of the newer Ultrua ATA cables but even so, a standard IDE cable will work for testing. Be advised, the cables pin 2 is marked with a red tracer on the end wire, note where that red end is as it has to be put back the same way with the new one on the MB, on the CD drive, the red end always goes twoard the power connector.
The IDE controller is built into the chip set on the Mother board but its possible you need a BIOS upgrade for the chip set to work right with XP pro. Did your burner work at all with XP? XP pro has burning software and drivers built into it that should pick a standard burner up no problems.
You said it was clicking, sometimes its possible for the gear to get messed up on the tray track, especially if you gave it a hard shove. The best way to re set it is with the puter powered off, straighten out a paper clip and put it in the small hole in the front of the CD device, its a small round hole and a paper clip fits in it fine and give it a gentle nudge, this should manually open the CD tray, pull the tray all the way out. If its off you should here a bit of grinding as you pull the tray out toward the end and that would be the gear jumping the teeth as it gets set back to the open position. then shove the tray back in and power it up and test the door button to check how it works.
Othere than that, you can buy a HP or other cleaning CD and try that in there, but hey, thease things do go bad so you may be SOL. The best thing I can think of to eliminate the IDE channel is like Chili said and try to hook your CDs on the Hard drive IDE one at a time jumped as slaves.