It's unfortunate (though understandable) that you bricked both before discovering the root cause. I remember hot-swapping EEPROM chips to repair a bricked mothe

It's unfortunate (though understandable) that you bricked both before discovering the root cause. I remember hot-swapping EEPROM chips to repair a bricked motherboard from a similar era. While attempting to upgrade the BIOS, something went wrong. Most likely there was a bad sector in the boot floppy I used. The result was an unbootable machine. Solution? Swap in a working EEPROM chip from a compatible motherboard. Boot to a floppy disk that has a BIOS imaging utility and image file. Hot-swap the bad EEPROM chip back in. Re-flash the BIOS. Or, if you had money, you could sometimes purchase a pre-flashed replacement EEPROM chip. I don't miss those days, but am fortunate to have experienced them. It forced us to learn more about how a computer really works.