LS120 wrote:Hi it depends on what make the board is.. i have some 286 setup tools i think.. is it a 286-8, 10 , 12 or 16 mhz some did have basic settings for if the battery went flat and the controller id ISA 16bit will over ride the drive settings on the bios for Hdd. most were set to 360kb 5.52" & 720kb 3.5" drives
look at the board and it should have a make model number on it.. also when they boot it should display board model on screen.
the f1 keyboard error could also be a fault with the Keyboard controller on the board. was the battery corroded on the board ?? if so the board maybe a non-goer.
try get some good clear pics to upload if you can of the board.
Ill post a photo when i get a chance.
Its basically an IBM AT clone from what i gather, the case looks very similar, and this award BIOS was actually an upgrade option you could purchase from award i believe that gave you more upgrade options on your IBM. I cant see any model number on the screen, other than award 286 bios v 2.6 appear on the monitor.
I do know what you mean, but ive seen a few old PC's. There probably is a model number on the motherboard, but I will probably have to remove it to find it.
Anyway, i was able to make some progress last night when i was able to copy the bios utility in the link i posted to a 5.25 floppy.
Ive got it booting off the MFM hard drive now and its still got years of old spreadsheets from some local business going way back to the 1980's to 1990's!
The F1 error was not a Keyboard error. It was a configuration error due to date and time not set, as the battery was flat etc.
Luckily the battery had not leaked and infact the old owner had a pack of 4 VARATA AA batteries soldered together.
Said "made in west germany" so must be dated before 1989. I can also vouch for their leak proof guarantee on the box! The batteries looked like new!
Anyway, after configuring the bios with the phoenix utility, it works, but gives me a different "configuration error, please run setup, press F1 to continue.
But this time when i press F1, it actually will boot.
It may be that its not configured with the proper award program perhaps?
Phoenix did merge with Award in later years, but i dont know if this program predates that or not.
Either way, this BIOS is not motherboard specific.