Abit AT7 bios problem

Hot-swapping and Boot-Block flash & Boot block flash and floppy support
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geobz618
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Joined: Mon May 24, 2010 10:39 pm

This Abit AT7 machine suffered a blue screen from an unknown issue. I decided to rebuild it clean. In the course of doing this I decided to bring the bios up to the newest level, bios ED (don't recall the previous version). I flashed with a boot and auto flash disk made from the Abit site and received what looked like a good flash.
The bios string is 08/29/2003-VT8367-8233A-6A6LVA1CC-ED. Boots from a Win98 strart up disk ok (no hard drive load yet.) I can hit the reset button, CRTL-Alt Delete on the keyboard (USB keybd and mouse only on the AT7), enter bios setup and exit without saving and it will restart.
If I change any one parameter in the setup and save and exit, it will not boot (no video, no reading the floppy) and I have to remove the battery, use the clear jumper and wait a while to get it going again.
This is with the machine stripped down to a floppy only and an ISA S3 Virge/DX 86c375 video board.
Backed up to the the pervious Bios 10/11/2002-VT8367-8233A-6A6LVA1CC-C4 with same results (from booting from a Win98 floppy and running the Bios using run.bat from a separate disk.)
I have used different memory and tried a different power supply with the same failure to boot if I change any one parameter (even disabling something like the 1394 setting) will do it. The processor is a 1100MHz/100 Athalon and comes on at 500MHz after clearing the CMOS to try again.
Any ideas would be appreciated. I like mysteries but this is getting old. Thanks for the help.
edwin
The Hardware Archivist
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Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 7:11 pm
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unknown issue maybe bad capacitors on the board. I suspect the green/gold ones near your memory slots have swollen a bit.

http://www.badcaps.net for examples and a bit of history.
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
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