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Ken

wrote:
I just installed a 486 board that someone gave me to replace a failed
386 into an old machine. There are programs on this machine that we
still use. The 486 board has Phoenix bios. Initially the setup option,
(F2) came up during post and allowed me to get into the bios to set
the drives up and the date. I did that and exited saving the
information. My 386 machine used an MFM controller board and I
plugged it into the new 486. The 486 however has an on board IDE
controller which it now occurs eto me perhaps should have been
disabled. So now when I try to boot it counts the ram and displays a
cache message but I get this message that reads : "last boot failed,
use default configuration". I assume that the default configuration is
part of bios but the problem is that the F2 option on startup is now
gone and I can't seem to get back into bios. I tried disconnecting the
battery and shorting across the ternminals on the board, and even
pulling the bios chip and shorting all the pins on a pad of aluminum
foil thinking that this may dump the memory, but nothing will get me
back. Does anyone know of a way to get back into bios after the
option no longer presents itself. Thanks very much for any assistance,
Lenny Stein, Barlen Electronics.

There might be several ways, including disconnecting all drives to the
MB. Since no drive is detected and therefore no operating system, an
error message should appear. Another way is to hold down any key on the
keyboard and many will give an error message regarding the keyboard
having failed due to a stuck key. The message generally allows you
access to CMOS setup at that time.