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clear CMOS/ reset BIOS on Professional Workstation 5100
(sorry it's a long post but if you read on you may be amused
at my stupidity and you may be able to help me - I hope!) I bought a 2nd hand pw5100 with a single PII 333. I added another PII 333 and the relevant VRM, and got a replacement 18.2GB Wide-Ultra SCSI drive. During my building of the machine I disconnected the floppy and booted the machine. It recognised the lack of floppy drive and changed the BIOS configuration to disable the floppy controller. I had already copied the Setup program onto the SCSI drive and could enter that happily by pressing F10 when the flashing blob appeared top-right. I then installed RedHat Linux 9, and naively selected the GRUB boot loader to boot from the RedHat partition with no option of booting the "DOS" partition where the Compaq Setup program is stored. I thought I would be able to enter this by pressing F10 before RedHat booted. I can't. I have tried many times and it always boots into RedHat. I also tried removing the Keyboard. This gave a keyb error and halted boot - "press F2 to continue". Even then pressing F10 did nothing and pressing F2 continued the RedHat boot. So I now want to re-enable the floppy drive and sound card, and need to access the Setup program to do so. I can't boot from the floppy as it is disabled in BIOS. I can't access the Setup partition. If I remove the SCSI drive I can boot from CD, but even with a different SCSI drive in I can't load the Setup program onto the SCSI drive as I have no floppy. I think I have the following options. 1) configure GRUB to allow booting the Setup Partition. I am a complete newbie to Linux, so I haven't a clue how to. (If anyone can offer help on this then I would be grateful too. Or can you tell me where to look for help files about Grub?) 2) reset BIOS to default settings which I guess would re-enable the floppy controller. I know and have used the switch to disable the boot password, but is there a jumper or keyboard sequence to reset BIOS? 3) make a bootable CD with the Compaq Setup on. I know it will be read-only, but I think this would work, but I don't know how to unpack the Softpaqs. I can't even read them from floppy on a Windows machine - they appear as non-formatted. Any advice? 4) remove all linux partitions on the SCSI drive. I think this will just make the whole disc into a non-bootable non-system disc. 5) remove the CMOS battery for a few hours. Will this reset defaults? Or will it kill the whole BIOS? Or most likely will it do nothing except upset the system clock, as probably all Setup details reside in EPROM anyway. 6) put up with the current Setup forever 7) bin it! Looking forward to all your thoughts. Richard |
#2
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well I finally got this sorted. I had tried numerous times to boot from the
CD but it always booted from the SCSI hard disc. I left a Linux install CD in the drive, and one time (having not run for 2 weeks) it booted from the CD. I deleted the linux partitions from the hard disc and got access to the Setup partition. All working fine now. "Richard" wrote in message ... (sorry it's a long post but if you read on you may be amused at my stupidity and you may be able to help me - I hope!) I bought a 2nd hand pw5100 with a single PII 333. I added another PII 333 and the relevant VRM, and got a replacement 18.2GB Wide-Ultra SCSI drive. During my building of the machine I disconnected the floppy and booted the machine. It recognised the lack of floppy drive and changed the BIOS configuration to disable the floppy controller. I had already copied the Setup program onto the SCSI drive and could enter that happily by pressing F10 when the flashing blob appeared top-right. I then installed RedHat Linux 9, and naively selected the GRUB boot loader to boot from the RedHat partition with no option of booting the "DOS" partition where the Compaq Setup program is stored. I thought I would be able to enter this by pressing F10 before RedHat booted. I can't. I have tried many times and it always boots into RedHat. I also tried removing the Keyboard. This gave a keyb error and halted boot - "press F2 to continue". Even then pressing F10 did nothing and pressing F2 continued the RedHat boot. So I now want to re-enable the floppy drive and sound card, and need to access the Setup program to do so. I can't boot from the floppy as it is disabled in BIOS. I can't access the Setup partition. If I remove the SCSI drive I can boot from CD, but even with a different SCSI drive in I can't load the Setup program onto the SCSI drive as I have no floppy. I think I have the following options. 1) configure GRUB to allow booting the Setup Partition. I am a complete newbie to Linux, so I haven't a clue how to. (If anyone can offer help on this then I would be grateful too. Or can you tell me where to look for help files about Grub?) 2) reset BIOS to default settings which I guess would re-enable the floppy controller. I know and have used the switch to disable the boot password, but is there a jumper or keyboard sequence to reset BIOS? 3) make a bootable CD with the Compaq Setup on. I know it will be read-only, but I think this would work, but I don't know how to unpack the Softpaqs. I can't even read them from floppy on a Windows machine - they appear as non-formatted. Any advice? 4) remove all linux partitions on the SCSI drive. I think this will just make the whole disc into a non-bootable non-system disc. 5) remove the CMOS battery for a few hours. Will this reset defaults? Or will it kill the whole BIOS? Or most likely will it do nothing except upset the system clock, as probably all Setup details reside in EPROM anyway. 6) put up with the current Setup forever 7) bin it! Looking forward to all your thoughts. Richard |
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