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First post, by abc

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It is Pentium MMX 233 MHz class notebook. At first boot I got "CMOS checksum error" where I could propably enter to BIOS and change settings (suggested me to push F1 or something). I have turned it off and replaced 1220 battery to 2032. At second boot with new battery I didn't got an error but I don't know how to enter to BIOS. I have tried all F1-F12, ESC, Del and none works 🙁 Any ideas ?

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Reply 1 of 12, by Horun

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Sorry can not find much. The Archive of the Peacock website is hard to find anything except a bit on the Challenger 600, but no documents...
Do you know what BIOS type it is ? Phoenix, AMI, Award ????

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 12, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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Bit of a stretch maybe, but I see a current listing for a Peacock Challenger 710 which seems to have a BIOS from SystemSoft Corporation, and another search suggests CTRL-ALT-S to access a SystemSoft laptop BIOS

Reply 3 of 12, by BitWrangler

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"Now there's a name I haven't heard in years." *Draws on a dog-end*

Sorry, nothing to add right now, but Peacock started an itch in my brain, like I had something to do with one before... I'll sleep on it and see if anything pops out of the long term brain hole.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 4 of 12, by Horun

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Good find PC Hoarder Patrol ! Looking at the NEC Versa 486 manual with Systemsoft 1994 bios, it lists Ctrl-Alt-S or Fn-F9
some other odd BIOS entery keys from my notes, other than the typical Del, F2 etc: older Phoenix BIOS: Ctrl+Alt+Esc, Ctrl+Alt+Ins, or Ctrl+Alt+S
The Esc key
Ctrl-Alt-F
Ctrl-Alt-Enter
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Del (using Del from the keypad)
Ctrl-Insert

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 5 of 12, by konc

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Try holding a key down during startup, hopefully it'll complain about "keyboard error" and tell you what to press to enter the BIOS

Reply 6 of 12, by abc

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Thank you for all answers and sorry for late reply but I was away for a week. It's AWARD. Tried all Horun's combinations but no luck.
konc's tip about holding buttons when turning on doesn't generate error. I must admit that I tried standard del, F1-F12 holding it when turning on too (knowing that from old IBM computers)
There is solution to get into BIOS - disassembly notebook pull out battery once again but much hassle 🙁

I have nonworking FDD drive in it but at Pentium era notebooks there wasn't BIOS configurations tools on floppy anymore right ?

Last edited by Stiletto on 2021-10-25, 18:33. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 7 of 12, by BitWrangler

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You would like to modify CMOS settings from disk? There are a few generic CMOS setup programs around. They only work for basic settings though. However you can maybe use one to force an error.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 8 of 12, by abc

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BitWrangler wrote on 2021-10-25, 13:03:

You would like to modify CMOS settings from disk?

I mean that there were cases of BIOS able to configure only from manufacturer's diskette service disk. If I good remember that how was it with some old Compacs ? In Pentium I era notebooks all had BIOS able to configure without disk ?

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Reply 9 of 12, by BitWrangler

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Well Compaq and IBM liked to do that on certain models still for a long while after, though they did it with a service partition, so it looks kinda like you're using onboard setup, but it's on the HDD... rather than using the floppy every time. Don't know if Peacock did that, not many other makers did. But if you use a linux boot CD or USB if capable and look at the HDD with that it should see any hidden partitions, which lets you know it's there but maybe got corruption or something, or misconfigured after someone messed with it. OR if you don't see one, that either says it didn't have one, or there's been a HDD swap or reconfiguration that nixed it. So really it's only a 50% shot it tells you anything.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 10 of 12, by abc

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I'm sure there wasn't USB boot in that age. CD-ROM boot propably but here we go back to beginning I cann't change boot order without entering to BIOS. Now it is not booting from CD.
When I get some time I will dissasembly once again and dosconnect battery to force an error.

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Reply 11 of 12, by BitWrangler

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Though you might have missed what I was saying about 3rd part generic CMOS setup utils, they don't do much, but if you set something wrong with them and save it might force an error, which is less work than opening it up. There's also CMOS clear utilities, but they get detected as viruses so often that they get deleted from archives and are hard to find. (Because there was an actual CMOS clearing virus.)

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.