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OT: Strange IBM motherboards

I just brought some IBM netvista P3-933 motherboards (for the price of 8 bit micro boards), hoping to install them as embedded devices. Unfortunately, I am having a tough time dealing with the bios. The board will not boot with the battery installed. If i remove the battery, it boots to the setup manual with annoying questions (setups). It runs fine after exiting setup. If I put the battery back, it will not boot again (after power cycle it).

Has anyone seen strange board like this? I just want to avoid using the keyboard everytime to boot it. Other than the boot problem, they are good cheap boards. (perhaps that the reason they are so cheap.)

Possible solutions are:

  1. reprogramming the bios.
  2. emulating the keyboard with a micro.

Any easier solution?

Reply to
linnix
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Well, now you know why they were so cheap.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Posting from Google?  See http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" came out in April.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
Reply to
Tim Wescott

  1. get rid of them, it's not worth the effort
--
Roman Ziak
www.dipmicro.com
Reply to
Roman

I might have to do it anyway. When the CMOS is corrupted or invalid, most motherboards need only one key to continue. But even one key requires keyboard and perhaps video screen. This one is particular annoying IBM style. There seems to be a 32 pins LPC Flash chip. I might just reflash it with an embedded boot BIOS.

It has an Intel 810 chip set and even 64 bits PCI.

Reply to
linnix

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