does anyone know how to connect an old hard drive to macbook pro?

It is possible some of those old drives may have failed, or may have seized up from sitting unused for so long. Do you feel the platters spinning? Can you hear & feel the drives heads moving when connecting the drive to the computer? If not, then the drive is either not working or you have a connection/power issue.

If you have an M-series laptop, then you also approve to allow the drives to be connected. macOS is supposed to have a pop-up prompt to confirm, but sometimes this pop-up can get behind another window, or perhaps is never shown. I personally prefer to adjust the Privacy & Security System Settings for "Allow accessories to connect" to "Always when unlocked" as it avoids this problem:

If your Mac asks you to allow an accessory to connect - Apple Support

Also, within Disk Utility click "View" and select "Show All Devices" so that the physical drives appear on the left pane of Disk Utility. If you don't see the physical drive appear on the left pane of Disk Utility, then there is a hardware issue of some sort (or the permission issue I noted for M-series laptops).

Make sure to try using another USB port & disconnect all other external devices just in case one of them is causing a problem.

Do you still have a working older Mac? If so, try those drives on that older Mac just in case there is a compatibility issue of some sort & compare results.

Also, it is possible those drives are not getting enough power. A hard drive dock such as one pictured by @Grant solves the power issue. A 2.5" USB drive enclosure for SATA drives is also an option if it includes its own power supply. You want good quality items.....OWC does provide good quality items....the rest of the Internet tends to have junk so it is hard to identify the quality products.

Presuming that your drives are modern enough to have SAT interfaces:

For casual, one-at-a-time use, you should be able to benefit from a SATA 'toaster' style enclosure, that provides a USB connection to your Mac.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3S3HD/

Sata is an internal connection. You cannot connect sata cables directly to a MacBook Pro What are you connecting these Sata cables to exactly?

Are the drives in an external enclosure?

Just an adapter?

Your Mac likely has USB-C ports which would necessitate at least one adapter to connect the drives to.

Also, how were these drives formatted originally?

Can you post a picture of your setup?