just so happens that suddenly i've got some old pc cards and stuff and i need couple of tips from the specialists, so here is the current configuration:

psu - dunno, something-something, 250W
motherboard - iwill bd100, with latest bios, i440bx chipset
ram - various sizes dimm (2x128 + 64 + 32)
video - geforce4 mx440
cpu - slot1 celeron 333mhz
isa soundcard - pnp sb16 - marked CT-4180 (i'm not sure what this is exactly, it seems to be SB16, it has vibra 16 marked on a chip and i think it doesnt have a connector for the daughterboard)
hdd - western digital caviar 34200 4.2gb
some old sony cd-rom... from 1998 iirc
realtek 8139 pci pnp network adapter (to connect to my other two XP pretty much medium modern computers in win98se)

i also have the following:

slot1 celerons - 266, 300A and 433 which doesn't work as it seems, cause when i install it, system just shows black screen and won't boot even to bios screen.

riva tnt2 pro, opti930 isa soundcard, diamond monster sound mx300, ensoniq audio pci 3000, s3 virge dx and maybe some other crap i forgot right now.

it's supposed to be win98se/dos command prompt boot (2 choices done through sections of autoexec.bat/config.sys)

the weird stuff:

upon some restarts, keyboard doesn't "reinitialize", i.e. it doesn't do a brief "flash" by indicators and i get bios keyboard error, unplug and plug back and press f1 and everything is ok. this happens *only* on reboots/restarts/reset and nowere else. what gives? i tested 3 different PS/2 keyboards so the deal may be with motherboard i presume?

the hdd is agonizingly SLOW in dos (though much faster in windows) - i guess that's because it's a pretty old hdd?

some games choke from time to time. most apparent in BLOOD (build engine game like duke3d, it also happens in duke3d), the game is fine, it's not the frame rate or anything, just every 5-10 seconds it pauses for very brief moments, very little but just enough to notice it and annoy the hell out of anyone. i've tried different memory modules, all my video cards (s3 and tnt2), other audio card, tried it all without them, with different cdrom, but it's all the same thing.

i even tried migrating that hardware (hdd, cd and video, no sound, no cdrom) onto totally different motherboard - chaintech CT-7VJD2 (+Athlon 1Ghz) but it's still stuttering, in blood, duke3d, redneck rampage... in both dos and win98se. maybe it's something to do with HDD? i know it sounds wacky but back in the old days i don't remember it being so messy even back when i had p166/32ram/S3Virge.

the next question is - if all the problems (keyboard not responding on reboot, probable hdd problem) can be sorted out and well maybe this motherboard isnt that bad after all, what would you recommend to replace in the config?

what's the max possible cpu for that mobo?
what's better - GF4MX440 or TNT2? or maybe other solution? some posts say some of them have bad vesa2 support, etc
what about ram?
what about hdd/cd?
and as for sound - i want isa card since they do not need tsrs in dos so i've read here a bit about lots of different soundblasters and daughterboards, what would you recommend? (i'm not after any eax or anything fancy... just good old dos games and maybe *some* win98 ones).

sorry if anything's being too confusing or redundant, i'm a newbie at this. thanks for all the help in advance.