ok so i got the board up and running. first issue was it was running bios a04 so neither my 750 or 850 slot one chips would post. so i slapped the slowest chip i had a 600 celron into power leap adapter. booted into windows 98 and made a boot floppy for the a11 bios update. got that updated.
then i swap the cpu to a 1400 celron. only issues i seem to have is keyboard in the bios don't work right. when the slower chip was in the keyboard seem to move multiple spaces with each push of the button or opening and closing menus multiple times with the enter button. with the faster chip in now u have to hold a button down a few seconds before it registers a push and then it kinda goes crazy and moves a few spaces.
when booted into dos it did weird stuff to typing letters more the once. deleting more the once.
once in windows 98 though its totally fine.
do these boards just not like usb keyboards. i don't currently have any ps/2 keyboards to try.
another thing is the dell manual says if u put the bios jumper into pin 2-3 it should go in to maintenance mode were u get an extra settings menu. however when i put the jumper on 2-3 video never comes on and the floppy drive just keeps trying to read. but everything works with the bios on pin 1-2 normal mode.