My Socket 939 rig that's functional now has Windows 7 on it, and I feel like a complete idiot. This good A8N SLI board was showing the same exact signs of failure as the A8N32 SLI Deluxe, and the same as the A8N SLI Premium. I figured out the problem, was PEBKAC. Apparently, the good old trick of ONLY having your drive plugged in that you intend to install Windows to......that was the trick to making these work. Any other drives connected (especially IDE when using SATA drives too), the machine won't boot from USB and install proper. To get Windows / any OS to install via USB, you HAVE to have just the USB stick plugged in and your destination drive. ALL other drives MUST be disconnected, otherwise it won't write the boot.ini properly or something (won't boot). I knew this was a "thing" back then, but honestly I forgot it was a thing on 939. I honestly didn't think I would run into these kinds of silly BIOS glitches till Socket A.
The machine DID function just fine on Windows 10 32bit, which was a surprise. However, sadly, Windows 10 does NOT function very well on a dual core at all. With all the background processes going on, the poor CPU was at 100% load 24/7 and it was an absolute nightmare to even try to use it to web browse because of that. If this were a dual Socket 940 rig with 2 dual cores installed instead of just one, it would operate perfectly and probably be a wonderful daily driver. Luckily Windows 7 doesn't exhibit those same problems. I was just hoping that all of my "multicore" systems could run it, but nope....not duallies.
The ZIP250 drive I have installed in the 939 rig is also broken. Too bad its outside of the 30 day warranty ebay allows as it most definitely arrived broken. -_- Oh well......
It's now 110% alive, functioning, overclocked to 2.90GHz, and I even played Killing Floor and Left 4 Dead on the 939 rig last night. Made me very happy. The 4 questionable boards are being sent out to Bones this week (thank you again Bones, seriously). He's going to take a whack at trying to recover these things before I go and blow more money on old worthless junk.