Under the empty crystall space on the pcb (upper left) there is a ram chip and on it's right an 8-pin device... What is it?
Also what is the large IC above the bios eproms? The pic is too small 😵
There is no other place/ic that I can see that could be an eeprom...

Allright after searching part numbers it seems that the HY 93C46 IC just under the empty crystal space is indeed a 1K (1024bit) EEPROM. So i'm wondering now if the EEPROM itself is dead. I'll try to get a plastic socket and a new EEPROM.

could also worth your time tracing and testing with a multimeter the 8 pins, maybe along the way something broke and the eeprom is ok

Good call, i'll try that as well.

Is it just me or there is something wrong in these pictures?

Trace marks but no actual copper !! And guess what no continuity whatsoever?

I don't see what you mean, your pics look the same as on my cards and the setup program works.

Can you save the settings on the EEPROM?

it could be just a case of multi-layered pcb, maybe there is another layer inside that is not visible

keropi wrote:

it could be just a case of multi-layered pcb, maybe there is another layer inside that is not visible

That's what i thought too, maybe this is a 4 layer board or something, but still suggested traces show no continuity on the multimeter anyway.

Maybe the EEPROM is really dead. According to the datasheet these serial EEPROMS have High Reliability like 1 Million Write Cycles and data retention of 100 years. It could be a case of ESD damage however.

I could write to it. Disabled the Bus Mouse as it took an IRQ.