I'm tinkering with a 386. The BIOS version is a little earlier than I'm familiar with, and by 'familiar with' I mean I last did this stuff 25+ years ago. It's been a while so I'm very rusty (I'm stuck on the hard drive interleaving setting!). I'm going through the Advanced options and the Chipset stuff and I have no idea what most of it is. Is there a big guide (or even better an old book?) that takes you through everything in a BIOS? Bonus points if it also talks about hardware a bit, since it goes hand in hand with its settings in the BIOS.
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BIOS/CMOS Guide?
- Thread starter Syntho
- Start date
T-R-A
Veteran Member
Trish's Motherboard and BIOS Hardware Help Resource
BIOS & motherboard help from Trish's categorized computer hardware resources for the newbie to the techie. Find jumper settings, drivers, upgrade info, bios & motherboard settings, etc.
hardwarehell.com
BIOS Survival Guide by Jean-Paul Rodrigue and Phil Croucher - [DOC Document]
The BIOS Survival Guide Version 5.4 Co-Edited by Jean-Paul Rodrigue (rodriguj@ere.umontreal.ca) and Phil Croucher (100427.2731@compuserve.com) 20-11-1996 Portions Copyright…
cupdf.com
modem7
10k Member
Search online for the The PC Engineers Reference Book, Volume 1, The BIOS Companion
Sections:
'Standard CMOS Setup'
'Advanced CMOS Setup'
'Advanced Chipset'
'Plug And Play/PCI'
Sections:
'Standard CMOS Setup'
'Advanced CMOS Setup'
'Advanced Chipset'
'Plug And Play/PCI'
yorkie
Member
Hello,
I've a similar problem in that it appertains more to a secondary HDD recognition of partitions.
The system has been defunct for about 20-years.
First of, a good clean. Second, replace the 2032 battery.
System - Socket 7 (I think), Award BIOS -1 x AGP, 4 x PCI, 2 x ISA,
Hardware Installed - Matrox 450 (AGP slot), Adaptec 2944W (PCI slot), Sound card and Ethernet (PCI), Adaptec 1515 (ISA).
The 1515 is attached to a Teac CD-R and a Plextor CD-RW. As per Adaptec it's on IRQ11, P140 (Bios IRQ reserved ISA/EISA).
The 2944W is attached to two IBM DHCSS S4 4.3GB drives. The boot-up will only attach the primary master.
OS Windows 98SE fixpack 2. Disk 1 partitioned into C:D:E:F. Disk two partitioned in G:?.......
Power-up, go into BIOS and do what changes I can remember for the original set-up. Save and continue.
Main issue : Initially I set the Primary to Auto and the Secondary to None as I thought the primary would be the daisy chain of the two HDD's
On boot-up's the BIOS s/w seems to have changed both channels to Auto. Both HDD's are recognised on Bios boot with 80h and 81h but
only the first HD is shown in Explorer. The Start -> Setup -> System says the are present but no drivers. The CD-Roms are recognised but
show Forced on Microsoft System Checker.
So, it may be that Disk 2 has been changed to Inactive and I'm hoping that there is a simple switch or setting to activate Disk 2 and it's partitions.
I hope to avoid FDISK ;-) Anybody able to help?
Kev
I've a similar problem in that it appertains more to a secondary HDD recognition of partitions.
The system has been defunct for about 20-years.
First of, a good clean. Second, replace the 2032 battery.
System - Socket 7 (I think), Award BIOS -1 x AGP, 4 x PCI, 2 x ISA,
Hardware Installed - Matrox 450 (AGP slot), Adaptec 2944W (PCI slot), Sound card and Ethernet (PCI), Adaptec 1515 (ISA).
The 1515 is attached to a Teac CD-R and a Plextor CD-RW. As per Adaptec it's on IRQ11, P140 (Bios IRQ reserved ISA/EISA).
The 2944W is attached to two IBM DHCSS S4 4.3GB drives. The boot-up will only attach the primary master.
OS Windows 98SE fixpack 2. Disk 1 partitioned into C:D:E:F. Disk two partitioned in G:?.......
Power-up, go into BIOS and do what changes I can remember for the original set-up. Save and continue.
Main issue : Initially I set the Primary to Auto and the Secondary to None as I thought the primary would be the daisy chain of the two HDD's
On boot-up's the BIOS s/w seems to have changed both channels to Auto. Both HDD's are recognised on Bios boot with 80h and 81h but
only the first HD is shown in Explorer. The Start -> Setup -> System says the are present but no drivers. The CD-Roms are recognised but
show Forced on Microsoft System Checker.
So, it may be that Disk 2 has been changed to Inactive and I'm hoping that there is a simple switch or setting to activate Disk 2 and it's partitions.
I hope to avoid FDISK ;-) Anybody able to help?
Kev
Chuck(G)
25k Member
A good guide to earlier BIOS operation is the set of books published by Phoenix.
Here's one
Here's one
yorkie
Member
Aaaah, after spending a few hours scratching the old bonce and taking my dementia medicine I finally thought, considering it's age, that it might be a multi-boot system with OS/2 on that disk 2. DFSee confirmed my hunch but now Win98se is busted (too many BIOS/CMOS/SCSI setting changes) so I might re-format and load an old copy of Win 8.0 that's laying about, especially as I cannot find my Win98 media.
Cheers,
Kev
T-R-A
Veteran Member
Sure a machine that old can handle Win8? (Don't personally know since I've never ventured beyond Win7). I'd go WinXP first, since it'll run on just about anything beyond a 350MHz P1 with a decent amount of RAM.
yorkie
Member
Might just do that as I've a couple of unused copies of XP. The XP system that I built about 4 years ago shorts out when I plug a big boy into one of the USB ports. Could be a motherboard issue (needs special oem stand-offs which I've not located and just bodged some). Start of the 90's one would be told in the motherboard handbook whether to ground or not. I've not seen advice on that with newer motherboards. If only all the issues went away I might be able to allocate more time sorting out an XP system.
Kev
p.s.
Indulge my forgetfulness!
At the end of a scsi hdd chain, the last disk
(which will be terminated) is Disk 1, yes?
Going to slip in another disk to image that
partition before nuking with Fdisk......;-)