First post, by bucket
I acquired a 5166 model a few years ago and got around to refurbing it recently - of course being stymied every step of the way.
There is no directly accessing the BIOS; I have to image a few floppy drives and install a DOS based Setup program to an empty HDD. The problem is that even though I've tried a few different versions of the Setup software, it keeps telling me the hardware is incompatible somewhere near the end of the process. It's extra frustrating because all the other diagnostic features work without a hitch. After some homework I noticed my motherboard is SLIGHTLY different from the ones you can find on the web; they all have 3 memory slots while mine has 4 but otherwise identical as far as I can tell. The only results from my specific motherboard are a Korean auction site.
Another possibility: the desktop shows signs of... creative IT solutions from the previous owner. This might be interfering with the software identifying the PC.
I suppose I COULD get it working without all that. It's not throwing any errors on boot and the old copy of Win95 starts up fine. But I don't want to, I guess?
bb