help (re) booting xenix after cmos battery failure

Roy J. Tellason rtellason at verizon.net
Thu Oct 2 22:34:05 CDT 2008


On Thursday 02 October 2008 13:39, Doc Shipley wrote:
> Brad Parker wrote:
> > A friend of a friend has an old xenix machine; Compaq DeskPro 386
> > running Xenix.  He shut if off after running for years and it won't
> > boot because the cmos battery is dead.
> >
> > The disk is an ESDI drive attached to a Compaq ESDI/FLPY controller
> > (copyright 1989) ISA bus card.
> >
> > He says can't see any way to enter a "setup" mode in the BIOS.
>
>    If the system has a diag partition, as a lot of Compaqs did, he'll
> need to hit F10 at boot time.  The cursor will move from upper left
> corner to upper right on the screen, and you've got maybe 2 seconds to
> hit F10.

Nice to see my recollection confirmed.

>    Failing that, I might have the diagnostic/setup floppy image.  I'll
> look for it this evening.

I think those are often pretty machine-specific,  but the last time I needed 
one I was able to download it from Compaq's web site. Though that was 
admittedly not recently...

-- 
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James 
M Dakin


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