Updating ESCD - stays like that forever - CPU problems?

I have an older ChainTech motherboard (5IEM), which I got - added 64 MB
memory, got an Pentium 166/200? socket 7, but - marked 2.8V(MMX) (board has
STD, VR and VRE). It has IDE'n'stuff onboard.
I added and older IDE VGA card, 1MB, and it works. The keyboard had to be
fixed as some F1 was missing - shortcutted to give keyboard power (ground).

The board has only the onboard stuff (IDE, floppy,com,lpt) and the VGA
card - but gives this message "Updating ESCD..." - and stops. Stayed like
that for 12 hours.

I added a hardrive with 425 MB and a floppy. No boot.

I disabled the cahce but internal and external as suggested on some pages on
the net.

Disabled keyboard (changed onhalt in bios) and unplugged that - no change.

The only thing left which can cause it is the VGA card. I unplugged that,
and tried to see if it would look 2nd time on the floppy - did not.

So, what can cause this? The fact, that it is an MMX CPU? (AFAIK it should
not work when overpowered - when I add 100Kohm to reach the correct voltage
it switched to 200MHz by itself). When using STD/3.3V it uses 166MHz? (board
is set to 66Mhz, cpuclk to 3 times that ?)

TIA
Sonnich

PS: please CC me (sonnich at hot.ee) as the neti.ee server does not always
get the latest messages :-(