Morse wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...

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.



Just keep quickly hitting F2 while it does its POST, it may get you into the
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,


The CMOS settings are not generally stored in the BIOS chip.


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.



If hitting F2 repeatedly does not work, disconnect the battery and leave
overnight as Andy Cuffe suggested.

Morse


One trick I used to use on obstinate 386es and 486es to get into the
CMOS was to insert a 3.5' floppy jacket with no disk inside it! Take a
scrap disk, remove the shutter and spring, split the edge you see when
its in the drive with a knife and pull out the disk from the jacket. It
used to work *most* of the time and usually saved opening the case.
Worth a try.

You *MUST* disable the onboard IDE if you want to run a standard MFM
controller but its possible you wont be able to run the MFM controller
on a board with onboard IDE as the BIOS may be expecting a more advanced
controller. You may well need to find a board *without* onboard drive
controllers. Its als possible it needs to time-out on the IDE
controller before you'll get the press F2 message. I remember one
machine that would take over 5 minutes to decide it *really* couldn't
boot and give me a F1 to continue, F2 to setup message.


Once you get it going, I strongly reccomend transferring the programs to
a newer technology drive. If they are DOS version dependent, dont
forget to make a boot flopy and copy the SYS, FDISK, ATTRIB, EDLIN and
FORMAT commands onto it as well.

--
Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED)
ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk [at]=@, [dash]=- &
[dot]=.
*Warning* SPAM TRAP set in header, Use email address in sig. if you must.