The power on self test (post) checks and configures your hardware. After all this is done, it looks for an operating system in the order set in the BIOS. If it finds one, it hands the process over to the device to continue booting. Now, what your blinking cursor does not tell us is if it ever got to this point. Normally, you would see some sort of boot error such as "no boot device" or "operating system not found". This does not always happen. What I would suggest is that you try to boot from a floppy disk. If the machine starts, the POST has completed to that point. If not, the POST has run into a snag. If this is the case, I would strip all unnecessary hardware and try again. Leave only the video card, RAM, and drives attached. Remove all other add in cards such as sound devices and modems and try again.
I'm playing with older systems from familly members to learn. I have a Tyan Trinity 400 S1854, 500 PIII, and a 3DFX video card. On start up It recognizes the 3DFX video card, Award Modular Bios, the MOBO, the CPU, all the memory installed, Award PnP Bios and then goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner and stays that way. Initially it would not recognize the primary master so I rest the CMOS then it showed the Primary Master Drive

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