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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.


Best thing should be the manual of the 486 board. Ever saw a German site
with lots of manuals of old boards. Without manual you can at least strip
the board to the minimum. Remove all boards (especially the MFM controller
but all others as well) so you have only the video and the keyboard left.
You should be able to enter the BIOS setup now.

Depending on the board you may be able to disable the IDE-controller(s) in
the BIOS. Some of the old boards used straps for it, on others you cannot
disable the controller at all. That's a real problem as both controllers
(IDE and MFM) use the same addresses (most of the times) so you cannot have
both enabled. Some controllers has straps to set alternate addresses but
most of them do not have these features.

Once on air, you can build up the machine again.

petrus bitbyter