• Leaky Ni-Cd clock battery

The Ni-Cd battery may be leaking, risking damage to PCB layers & nearby components. Promptly remove the battery & clean corrosion/alkaline salts from the board. Use white vinegar to dissolve salts, but exercise caution as vinegar can corrode exposed metals. A thorough examination & repair may be needed. Replace battery with guide: https://github.com/wiretap-retro/Not-A-Varta

• Fake cache

The motherboard may include a non-functional or counterfeit SRAM cache, which can adversely affect performance. Signs of fake cache often include soldered DIP-chips and no jumpers to set the chache size. Cache functionality can usually be restored by installing proper chips, jumpers and a BIOS update/mod.

This motherboard is infamous for having no cache. The "DCA" technology was a fraud by Octek (see here http://redhill.net.au/b/b-95.html) The Hippo VL is identical to the VL+ except having a LIF socket instead of ZIF. Hence the schema and settings of the VL+ were added here.