Almost two years have passed, and during this time two new toys have found their way to my home lab: an oscilloscope and a digital microscope.

From time to time I like to pull some board from the "dead" box and give it one more try, maybe using the above tools which I hadn't available when first trying to repair the respective board. Few days ago it was this Soltek's turn for this treatment.

The oscilloscope helped me to determine that all the clock signals are present and have the right frequency.

As there was a mention of the possibility of broken solder balls under the NB, I checked the resistance of each data bus pin vs. ground, no CPU installed, and found them all identical, so no breakage - at least on the data bus.

Then I had another go at visual inspection, using both the microscope and a strong magnifying glass. Ironically, it was the magnifier that helped me spot something that eluded me since the beginning. A hairline crack in a 680 ohm resistor network (RN12), near the CPU socket, in the area that received the most damage. Transplanted a identical one from a scrap board, again keeping the expectations low, ...BUT..., as you can see:

Fitted a matching heatsink on the NB (original was gone), board ran flawlessly through Phil's DOS benchmark pack and other DOS diagnostic tools. I'll test it under Windows later on, but I don't expect other trouble.
All in all, a happy retro day 😀

That board is gorgeous. Congrats on reviving it.

Excellent news!! It's always great to see old broken hardware brought back to life and be used again.

Congratulations on your success, you have a lot of patience and nerve.
I have the same board and a smaller problem than you and I can't fix it.
When I turn it on,vent is spinning it starts reading numbers on the post test card and after two seconds the numbers start to disappear, then appear, then turn on and off, and finally disappear completely, and the motherboard doesn't boot, there's no beep from the speaker, or any image,any idea what's wrong?

Thanks 😀

Strange behaviour. Does the post card let you cycle through the codes that were displayed? Use your phone's camera if not.
Also, can you rule out a corrupted BIOS?

Glad this got bumped, what an exciting read!! Glad you persisted and got it working. Love these Soltek boards wowo

To cut a long story short, the board worked as follows.
Only after I switched jumper J5 (anti burn shield abs2) dozens of times from pins 1-2 closed to pins 2-3 disable overheat did the board stop resetting but it still didn't boot.
The board would give signs of life only if the antiburn shield is turned off, (it doesn't matter which CPU you put in it) if the antiburn shield is on, it resets non-stop and the voltage increases and decreases, which can be seen by the rotation of the fan on the CPU and the power supply!!
Then I switched jumper Jp2 several times (1-2 closed133/166mhz to 2-3 closed 166/200mhz)
It doesn't matter which CPU is in the motherboard, I tried at least 10 different models.

Then, testing the processors, I concluded that the board works, but only with weaker processors up to approx. duron or athlon 1.7, when all stronger processors are inserted into the board, it does not work and the symptoms are the same.
With these weaker components, the antiburn shield (J5 jumper) can be turned on and the board enters the bios properly and works.
I'm thinking of finding a newer version of the bios and putting it on it, the current one is REV D1 .7L.
Until now, there was an Athlon 2500 on the board and it worked stably and normally, I don't know what happened in the meantime.
Maybe I'm making a mistake somewhere in the steps, so if you have any advice or suggestions, please tell me.

Small update,after ho know how many attempts board is working with athlon 2500 133fsb.
Problem is always if i put fsb166 mhz board is reseting all the time,a manage to set jumper on the board at 166mhz and board i booting.
But after i change in bios fsb to 166mhz it won't boot,resets all time.
It doesen't matter if cpu is 133 or 166 fsb,i tried remove jumper from the motherboard so it's not 133 not 166 fsb but the same problem exist.

Check the capacitors. I had to replace mine (originally had Chemicon KZG series) with Rubycon MBZ. Haven't had any FSB issues since.

Thx for sugestion i was thinking to change them all but they looks just fine and i gave up.
I will do that and post result.

Forget to mention that i put te latest version of bios and no change at all.