I have a boot problem with a machine I have been asked to look at.
The signs and symptoms are as follows: with the original Cyrix 333 processor,
I get a beep every second and nothing on the screen but with a Pentium 120
and 166 there is nothing for about 20 seconds and then a beep about every 2
to 3 seconds and still nothing on the screen.
Hope you can help.

Did you check to see if the RAM chips are properly in their sockets? This happened to me before.

The beeps at start up are from the bios POST:
Power
On
Self
Test

Check out www.thescreensavers.com (http://www.thescreensavers.com) and serach for Computer Beep Codes. They list all of the beep codes for many many BIOS chips.

The Beep is a way the computer communicate with its human about somekind of problem it had encounterd before loading the video. Each BIOS communicate in a different way so these beeps vary from BIOS manufacturer to another. For example it your BIOS is an AMI then you have to count how many beeps there are and look at the AMI website for an exact cause whether it is a loose memory chip, a bad video card, mismatched cache, bad Power supply, or even a bad motherboard.