Welp, an update… something ain’t good.
Here’s the issues… I haven’t been able to reliably boot off a CD to play test RAM with Memtest x86.
Most boots hang after I get “Verifying. DMI Pool Data”
The odd time I am able to get it to boot off CD-ROM and run Memtest x86 it hangs/freezes at 1%. This happens regardless of what RAM stick I put in DIMM slot 0 or regardless of what version of Memtest x86 I use.
I have swapped out optical drives and cables.
It *could be* that ALL the SD RAM 133Mhz sticks I own are bad, so I am thinking to buy a brand new stick of 256 MB 133Mhz SD RAM to rule that out… however I don’t think it is the RAM that is the problem.
It *could* be the cache on the PIII SL4MB and SL52P chips in the motherboard. (BTW, if I am to use only one PIII for testing purposes I understand I need to put a terminator in the unused 370 socket, is that right? I do not own one of these)
I am using a known good 32MB RAM Nvidia GeForce 2 MX graphics card (I state this incase someone thinks my video RAM is bad).
Sadly my intuition leads me to think the problem is my VP6 board.
I have set RAM settings in the BIOS to “normal” and other settings but that has not remedied the problem.
Please note the capacitors on the VP6 look good and are not bulging.
I am hoping that someone knows the issue I am having here and suggests things to try… if there’s no simple solution I am thinking to donate the board to the @bitsundbolts YouTube channel so he can try fixing it for content. I sadly can not afford to invest in repair equipment right now nor do I have the skill set/ ability required to solder (medical issues).