A friend of mine came to me with this problem. He has an American Megatrends motherboard and can't get it to boot past the Checking NV RAM.. part

here is what is on the screen when it freezes
American Megatrends
AMIBIOS
TYAN TSUNAMI AT V2.00.01 012520001800
Intel 440BX AGPset

P II, 400Mhz
Checking NVRam..

then down at the bottom of the screen it says
62-0101-00999-0010111-071595-440BX/GX-51830001-5

What we have done:
Switched PCI video card to another PCI slot
Disconnected everything but the floppy/cd/harddrive
Reseated the RAM, switched RAM slots, and tried different RAM modules with ones that are known to work.

He says 1 time it made it past checking NVRam (where it counts the RAM) and then froze when it first said hit del to enter BIOS.

Edit: He also remembered that when he first booted he had 3 RAM modules in and all it would say is American Megatrends with the logo and that was it, so he removed 2 and left 1 and thats where we are now.

2nd Edit: When I asked him what happens when he tries it with no RAM he says "nothing, it beeps".

Anyone have any ideas on what to try next? Could it just be that the motherboard is bad where the RAM fits?

Alright - I just recieved word that it now works. Which leads me to believe that even though it appeared we had the RAM set properly it wasn't.
Now it boots into Win98 and just gives the usual errors when you don't have proper drivers installed and such, I'm going to let him work on that on his own because I think he has a pretty good handle on getting that set straight.
(he pulled this PC together from scrap parts so even getting this thing to run is a plus for him)
I'll post back with any other motherboard related problems that might crop up.