Exchange the cache chips with those of another board.

Solved! On the mobo, the default jumper setting for "second cache wait states" is 0 -

» Secondary cache speed 0 wait states | J33 | pins 1 & 2 closed

But the default BIOS setting for cache wait state is 1. I changed that to 0, et voila!, the mobo boots up OK! 😀

This default BIOS setting needs to be altered to match exactly with the default mobo jumper setting. Strange: the fact that both of these default settings seem to be set to different values.

Another problem has emerged with this board. I managed to get an ISA soundblaster working on it, but only by selecting the "load BIOS defaults" option from the BIOS setup area - otherwise, the Creative diagnose.exe failed on all DMA choices. (I think "load BIOS defaults" is the same as load failsafe options, as opposed to "load setup defaults", which is the same as "best performance" BIOS settings.)

Anyway, the problem I'm now having is that I'm trying to get my ISA-based CD-ROM controller card to work. When the board boots up, it gets stuck on the auto/config section which attempts to initialize the CD-ROM drive. (It then fails in its attempt to find the CD-ROM drive, and continues to the DOS prompt.)

I'm guessing that I can bypass using the CD-ROM controller, and simply slave the CD-ROM drive off from my integrated IDE HDD ribbon cable. But what if I replace this IDE HDD with a compact flash IDE contraption - I won't be able to do that, will I?

In any case, I've always had success using my ISA-based CD-ROM controller card, and I'd like to know why it's failing on this particular board. This board seems to have some unusual jumper options, such as controlling various IRQs, SCSI options, and other uncommon options. It seems a bit of an awkard board to get working, certainly for a novice.