Re: busted BIOS part 2..

In message <22yce.468$Rr3.253@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, j.b. miller <invalidjbmiller@xxxxxxxxx> writes
And just HOW do I get a PC without keyboard control to accomplish this ???
Many motherboards have a mechanism to enable recovery from a corrupt BIOS. The boards are able to boot from a floppy with a copy of the correct BIOS flash file and automatically reprogram the BIOS chip from it, all without needing any user intervention. If your board supports this you should be able to find the procedure and full instructions for making the disk on the manufacturer's website. 
I have the AMI flash for this pcchips mb on another PC, but as this mb won't
boot past the 'press f1 or del key' script it's real hard to carry on....
If your board supports it, you don't need a keyboard to perform a flash recovery boot. 
Another idea was that it(CMOS) might be set to a USB keyboard , however 'it'
the BIOS, has installed the 'default' configuration which I ,ah, assume,
would be for a PS2 style keyboard and mouse.
Does the PS/2 keyboard flash it's scroll,caps leds when you power the board up? If not, you might want to check for 5 volts at the KB socket, you might have a blown fuse on the board or an open trace that feeds the keyboard.
--
Clint Sharp
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: 2 wondows versions detected on pc startup?
    ... if not put there by the BIOS? ... BIOS examines the very first sector of the disk for a Master Boot Record ... table which describes the layout of the fixed disk and the partition loader ... This is where Windows and NTLDR comes in, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.setup_deployment)
  • Re: maximum hard drive size in Latitude cpi
    ... > actually written a boot loader they won't be so adamant about how "Windows ... > of the disk, and while it is being read off of the disk the machine is ... > limitatoins of that BIOS. ... After that the kernel takes over. ...
    (comp.sys.laptops)
  • Re: Fn-F2 on dell 1505 under debian 4.0 etch
    ... now you can change bios, cmos setting of your dell laptop from ... some tokens are here:http://linux.dell.com/libsmbios/main/token.html ... "Enables the systemâ??s built-in parallel port to operate in AT mode ... 0x0051 Boot_Diskette_First "For the next system boot, ...
    (comp.sys.laptops)
  • Re: [DOCUMENT] Re: Intel Macs that boot FreeBSD?
    ... on how closely coupled the FreeBSD/i386 boot process is to the BIOS ... Reads and relocates boot2 to low memory to continue boot process ... 40:49h Video Mode ...
    (freebsd-current)
  • Re: [SLE] Problems with initrd after mkinitrd
    ... Not a problem, Patrick... ... "4MB Flash ROM with AMI* BIOS, Multiboot BBS ... - it brings the possibility back to life that these drives (or the entire IDE ...
    (SuSE)