I see in the picture you're using only a single 72pin SIMM. Socket 4,5&7 have a 64bit memory bus and need 72pin SIMMs installed in pairs of identical modules.
Could this be the issue here?

Edit: Support for SDRAM was still hit or miss in this generation of chipset. You only need a single DIMM of SDRAM but there may still be a compatibility problem causing issues.

Shyzah wrote on 2021-09-05, 04:38:

I found another user was having a similar issue on this thread: posting.php?mode=reply&f=46&t=55265

This link didn't work. Here is the corrected link:
Socket 7 DTK mainboard, no post continuous beeps
Gonna read it now and will edit this reply.

EDIT:
The other thread didn't come with any info that I see could be of any use here.
I'd suggest you start again with basic troubleshooting.

Try to find a manual for this board so you know what settings should be the correct ones. Also make absolutely sure that everything is connected up correctly. Not doing so may risk damaging any of multiple components and make things even worse.

You mentioned you are new to retro computing.

For instance (and as been mentioned before by Doornkaat), back then it mattered in which slot you placed the RAM. You need to place an identical pair of SIMMs into the first 2 slots (if I saw correctly on your board this is the lower 2 SIMM slots).
IF you use SDRAM then you only need single ones. And Doornkaat is correct again in that these early Pentium boards could be very finicky with newer SDRAMs.
Do not mix these 2 different memory types, most (if not all?) boards did not support mixing these types of memory so for troubleshooting purposes it's best to use only 1 of the 2 types of memory.

You should be safe btw to underclock your CPU. Try to troubleshoot without stuff like harddrive and any removable media drives. You basically only really need the motherboard, a graphics card, a PSU, a monitor, a keyboard and perhaps a PC speaker (or equivalent) so you can hear the beeps. And of course a correctly installed CPU and some RAM.

Shyzah wrote on 2021-09-05, 04:38:

Could a bad Dallas Clock Module cause this?? My IBM 35SX had a dead one that I replaced but the it still posted.

If the Dallas RTC chip on a Socket 7 motherboard was bad it will POST but then you will be stuck with the default BIOS configuration, if it was removed then it will refuse to POST or beep at all. I have tested this when replacing that RTC chip.

That board has an Award BIOS.

Beeps endlessly repeating indicate a RAM problem.

You link to a different topic, but apart from Award BIOS and RAM issues, there are no similarities. This motherboard has an Intel i430VX chipset, the other one has a SiS5598. As already stated, your i430VX chipset cannot run with a single SIMM (SiS 5598 can iirc, with disasterous performance though) and your i430VX is a very early SDRAM chipset (the first, in fact) with extremely limited compatibility, where the SiS5598 is a nice compatible 2nd generation chipset that will accept most DIMMs, worst-case only detecting/utilizing half the amount of memory.

So: your pic shows a single SIMM in SIMM slot 3. Remove it and put two matched SIMMs in slots 1 and 2. If that doesn't work, put the same matched SIMMs in slots 3 and4. If you have a 16 or 32MB SDRAM DIMM with resp 8 or 16 chips, you can try that in one of the DIMM slots (with no SIMMs present!) as well.

Still keeps failing? Then look at the cache. There is a COAST module in there. It might be bad (or incompatible). Remove it, then repeat tests with two matched SIMMs.

As for the Dallas RTC... I *have* seen boards refusing to boot with bad RTC battery, but they don't give bad RAM beeps like this one does. You need to mod or replace that DS12887A for the board to keep time and BIOS settings, but I strongly doubt it's the cause of not booting at all.

And for future reference: it helps a *lot* if you tell us exactly which SIMMs and DIMMs (brand+model if available, if not at least the form factor (72p SIMM vs 168p DIMM), number of chips and the chip code (first row of characters on the chips) you've tested and which slot(s) you put them in. Says a lot more than "I tried changing around ram sticks"

Could you please have a look at the 2 marked spots in this pic?

I second removing the COAST module

Thanks guys for the help. Took me a while to have time to work on this particular system again.
Tetrium, what the red circles were pointing out turned out to be debris I was able to clean away.

I tried using the multiples of the same stick I have inserted in the picture (from a Compaq Presario 4712) and for some reason it wouldn't post. Then I tried 4 ram sticks from an older Intergraph machine and I got the system to post! yay! well... 30 minutes later the system refused to post again. All I did was power it off to untangle the cord. Weird.

Update:
got it to post again by swapping location of graphics card, but it stopped working again after power cycling. ??

Update 2:
It seems like if I let the PC sit for 3 minutes turned off, it posts perfectly fine.
If I update settings in BIOS and save & reset, the PC stops working again.

I have another PC with an Award BIOS chip around the same year and one thing that I have noticed is that this problem PC seems to be running at a faster speed. Not sure if that makes sense. Everything seems to load quicker and the ticking bar is also ticking faster. When I load into my DOS floppy, the cursor bar is also ticking fast.

Hve you already tried removing the COAST stick we mentioned a couple of times above?

dionb wrote on 2021-09-16, 10:42:

Hve you already tried removing the COAST stick we mentioned a couple of times above?

Yes, i removed the coast module and didnt notice any difference