Help Needed; BIOS

I recently acquired the parts to piece together a fairly old system. It took me a few hours today to clean the parts up and piece everything together, but I finally got the damned thing to boot up.

Question is, how do I enter into the BIOS of this machine ?
It is a true 386 / 80486, it has just over 15MB of 30 pin RAM. When I boot it up, it says AMI BIOS 1993 American Megatrends: Resident Diagnostics V1.11. I have also been able to find the BIOS update date as 12/15/93.

The obvious keys don't work, I have already tired F1-12, [tab], [delete], et cetera.

It boots into a stripped SCO Unix; stops at the [boot:] prompt.

It does not boot off of floppy or cd-rom drive first, if it even supports either.

Any help at all will be greatly appreciated; might not only be BIOS, any other advice on what to do will also be appreciated.

From what I've found, it looks like the key should be delete.

Try esc. If that doesn't work, just punch every key on the keyboard. That usually works :D

For older BIOS "Delete" should work...repeatedly press Delete

The thing is there should be some key... and the possibility of a combination key(eg shift+..) is less probable..so try different keys

maverick

Already tried. . . :(

Any other ideas?

The key board works fine too, I tried to get SCO to do anything but stopped after I realized it's worthless, or maybe I am worthless at using it, one of those.

A3ther

Try disconnecting the harddrive/IDE cable then reboot. This sometimes forces the PC to prompt
the setup mode/BIOS. It has worked for me in the past,,,(cant explain it.murphy's law)

Good luck,,,

The only thing I'm thinking of, is paying $50 for a cheap, but new M/B to stick in there.

Try laying your whole arm across the keyboard. You have to keep trying.

Just out of curiosity here, but it doesnt' say anything like "press DEL to enter BIOS" or press F10 to enter setup.??

Nope, only says what I stated before.
Have tried pressing every key one at a time, and also punching key board, neither work.

Disconnecting the hard drive, removing proc, removing memory, don't get me to BIOS.

The computer is not worth a new board, even a $50 one. But I still want to get it working, seems too much of a waste to toss or scrap it.

long shot here for the floppy boot part.. if there is a battery on the board perhaps removing it and forcing the BIOS back to default state may set default boot device to floppy

try F8

or try Esc

or try using a hammer :)

Nightfalls_Girl

Default boot device isn't floppy. Not even sure if it supports 3.5" floppy. (even after removing battery / resetting BIOS)

I have already tried every [F] key, I have already tried [Esc]. I have already tried tapping every key slowly, quickly, and in between.

Disconnect harddrive, boot from floppy and fdisk the harddrive...
w/o an OS/harddrive, BIOS has to at some point resort to booting from floppy..

If I disconnect the hard drive, it takes 5 minutes to boot up; says IDE controller not found, goes through POST, says operating system not found. If I have a floppy disk in there, it ignores it and never accesses the disk. The drive does have power, and the little light goes on, but the system never attempts to boot from the floppy.

if you have a shotgun you could try shooting it. ;) i would. can you buy a new bios and on to it?

If what you say is occuring, then either your floppy controller is screwed up or your boot disk is not valid ,,just for shits and giggles,create anothe boot disk if you have resources,,

P.S.
If that doesnt work,,I strongly recommend nate_k9's recommendation

BIOS is not removable, at least easily, not a snapped in chip, saudered on to the main board.

Disk is fine, works perfectly in computer right next to this one. Disk drive is fine, works perfectly in computer right next to this one. Floppy controller is fine, saw this motherboard work yesterday at a different location.

hmmmmm. maybe its not your bios. how old is this computer exactly? if your tech savvy you could sauder that one off and install a new one. but i doubt it would be worth the trouble. 12 gauge......12 gauge.....12 gauge........

Quote:

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Originally posted here by gunit0072003
If what you say is occuring, then either your floppy controller is screwed up or your boot disk is not valid ,,just for shits and giggles,create anothe boot disk if you have resources,,

P.S.
If that doesnt work,,I strongly recommend nate_k9's recommendation

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Cant you d00ds get it right its a HAMMER not a gun!!!
hammer is expressing anger managment skills gun expresses weekness and lazyness...

shuks

Nightfalls_Girl

Ha, no, I will pass, 30+ pins tightly together; 12 gauge to sauder what? A car door back on?

I have a 20 gauge double barrel shotgun you can borrow if you want it.

lol, hey i resent that! :) i like my guns thank you. but i guess a hammer would do the job if you had to resort to more barberic means. lol. hmmmm im totally lost on this one. maybe you should........ yea that would work. hammer sounds good.

Aslo, forgot to mention, remove harddrive and install in working PC so you can fdisk/format.

You can 1) try installing preformatted harddrive back in PC to see if BIOS comes up or you boot from floppy, or 2) you can install new OS on formatted harddrive from working PC and then install back.. You might have to configure some basic drivers,,,It should work though...

Quote:

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Originally posted here by nate_k9
lol, hey i resent that! :) i like my guns thank you. but i guess a hammer would do the job if you had to resort to more barberic means. lol. hmmmm im totally lost on this one. maybe you should........ yea that would work. hammer sounds good.

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now see that wasnt so hard to com around to seeing my thoughts on a hammer ws it!!!??

A3ther "Ha, no, I will pass, 30+ pins tightly together; 12 gauge to sauder what? A car door back on?" urrrrr..... ok if u wish to... ur miss luck may be next time...


Nightfalls_Girl

I think that is what I am going to do.

Just take out the hard drive, ghost an image of freeBSD onto it and forget about the BIOS.

Did it work? if not, im sure you do have a HAMMER (lol) lying around somewhere. Or if you really want violence you could drop it out of a window, run over it with your car, throw bricks at it, rig up explosives, or just set it on fire......

better idea, tye it to the back of the car after smashing it with a HAMMER!!!! go for a long fast drive down the streat with a banner stating how much that brand of PC sux...
or draw and quarter it :)
throw it over the fence the next time there dog barks.
sell it...

Nightfalls_Girl

hmmmmmm..... ok. you can can chain it up to the back of your car drag it down the road while screamin (your choice of F words). then shoot it, then beat it with a hammer. a really big hammer like a 15lbs sledge. then set it on fire and shoot it some more and toss it in the lake saying burn in hell you piece of (your choice). then laugh sadisticly. yes..... you know i really dont need this computer anymore........

ok if you wi8sh mail our computer to po box 5604 Australia gorrd town..

andi will take care of it for you..
LOL

$500,000 fee does apply, insurance reasons..

oh well off to work i go...

Nightfalls_girl

nah, i think ill keep it. but i do have an old AST i could destroy/torture/drown/burn/and/or/at the same time shoot...... yea.... uh ill be back in a few. got some business with AST....... Wheres my shotgun again.......... :) lol

PARRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTYYYYYYYYYYYYY...................

YEEEEHAHAAAA


Nightfalls_Girl

i wonder what happend to A3ther? he hasnt posted in quite some time.... did somebody give him a gun, i sure hope not. im worried... A3ther! do not go into the light!!

/me is ghosting the hdd. Attempthing to get 2GB OS / App's onto a 500MB space

hmmmmmmm...... Good luck. What is the main purpose of this comp anyway? just to see if it works or what? i once tryed to experiment with an commadore. i didnt succed very well.

Good luck ghosting the drive.

I know you said you tried every key, but did you try a keyboard error? Try holding down a key or two then power up. Sometimes that will let you into the bios.

While cleaning it were you able to identify the brand of MB ?

The logical steps I would take would be to identify the BIOS vendor and search for there entry keys.

Some that I didnt see mentioned are: Ctrl + Alt + Esc, Ctrl + Alt + Enter

i think its hopless now. the bios could just be faulty, who knows. nice pic of bruce there pak u fan of his also?

A quick search on google for AMI BIOS 1993 American Megatrends threw this up, havent really studied it myself but it might help!

http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache...ient=lgtech-kb

Purpose of this box is going to be a hardware, pass through firewall / snort, installed inside of lan.

Already have a main box, outside of primary router configured up with iptables / snort, this one is going to be placed after router before private lan.