Great news!!! 😉

A little update: the Turbo button was set to either on or off, I don't remember, and that halted the ESCD Update. When I pressed it to the other setting, it worked fine. Not sure which setting was which but I just unplugged it from he header along with its LED an now all is back to normal.

Even though I've read this 100 times in the past week I'm not sure if ESCD updating every time I boot up is normal.
I'm not even sure it happened before all of this. Gonna read about it one more time. EDIT: yep, I've got W95 on the system. That's why I bet.

Thanks for all the suggestions and help.

Syntho wrote on 2023-01-29, 18:26:

A little update: the Turbo button was set to either on or off, I don't remember, and that halted the ESCD Update. When I pressed […]
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A little update: the Turbo button was set to either on or off, I don't remember, and that halted the ESCD Update. When I pressed it to the other setting, it worked fine. Not sure which setting was which but I just unplugged it from he header along with its LED an now all is back to normal.

Even though I've read this 100 times in the past week I'm not sure if ESCD updating every time I boot up is normal.
I'm not even sure it happened before all of this. Gonna read about it one more time. EDIT: yep, I've got W95 on the system. That's why I bet.

Thanks for all the suggestions and help.

Turbo on can even change wait state and CLK 2/3 for memory causing to be unstable. So ot's not only for the CPU clock, it was like that often in 286/386 PCs.

Spitz wrote on 2023-01-29, 10:04:

Syntho I may have solution for You. What cache chips are installed on mobo?

On one of my FIC-PA Mobo which I bought as non working I had corrupted cache modules. The option was to set 128, 256, 512 or off. Only 128 or off option work for it. It was freezing at ESCD same spot as in Your case. My opinion is that some of the info given from BIOS my go through cache if this one is enabled and if it's corrupted it will freeze.... Maybe that changed BIOS works in different way.. I dunno.

Anyway I've managed to fix this problem and mobo is usable. I highly recommend to work with switches/jumpers on mobo and try to chceck random options after uploading original BIOS.

Which PA motherboard was it exactly? You made me curious.