Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum so I hope this is the right place to post.

I have a few random socket 478 (and socket 370) motherboards that I've picked up from a thrift store a while ago. Out of them I chose to use an Intel 865 PE chipset board, and while it's usable, restarting in MS-DOS mode doesn't work. So I thought to try one of my other boards, being the l401-R with the Intel 845 chipset.

Original 865 PE Specs:

• 2.4B Pentium 4 Northwood

• 2x256MB DDR 266

• AGP 8x slot

• EVGA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra

Jetway l401-R:

• 1.6GHz Pentium 4

• 1x256MB PC133 SDRAM

• AGP 4x slot

• EVGA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra

Once I plugged everything in, it POSTed just fine and was even able to install Windows 98SE and all the necessary drivers. I tested "restart the computer in MS-DOS mode" and woohoo! It worked! And I was even able to escape DOS and go back to Windows. Then the problem occurred randomly when using the machine after a couple hours. The computer shut down into what I thought was a sleep mode like state. After forcing the computer off and rebooting it POSTed fine (could even go into the BIOS settings and change things), but as soon as it would start to boot Windows it would go to a black screen. I can sort of see a very faint (super dark and barely visible) flicker like the video card died. So I tried to boot into the Windows 98SE setup floppy, and it did the same exact thing.

After messing with it for a while, I gave up, swapped the original board, then went to bed. Then the next day I got curious and tried using a better power supply to see if maybe that was my issue. I inserted the boot floppy and Windows 98SE setup CD, and what do you know, it worked! I thought, hey maybe that was it. Then not too long after, after all that work setting it up again... it happened again. I even swapped the FX 5700 Ultra with another card, the ATI Radeon 9250, and still a black screen once it starts to boot into Windows. So I gave up and swapped the board and haven't touched the Jetway since.

My question is, what could possibly be causing this? I never seen this issue before.

Any ideas or feedback is much appreciated, thanks!