I have finished making the Micro ATX ISA Backplane and the Xi 8088 boards. The backplane appears to be fine and is being by a brand new 300W power supply. When I plug the CPU board in and switch on, as soon as I press the power button the backplane LEDs come on briefly then dim out to zilch. I had a 8087 mounted so I have removed that but it makes no difference. I have tried a couple of other ISA cards (Trident VGA and the XT-CF-Lite) and when powered on with both of these inserted, the power supply is fine.
So something is seriously wrong with the Xi 8088 board - but the question is what? I have examined soldering under a gigantic magnifying glass, and everything looks good visually at least, and have checked all the right chips are in the right places and the right way around. I was expecting some problems, but not completely dead.
Anyone got any suggestions where to start looking? Otherwise I will try and check power lines for shorts in the morning, but I would have expected something worse to happen if that was the case.