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.- posted
17 years ago