If the floppy drive is good, a properly programmed BIOS recovery disk could do the trick. You would need a good floppy disk of course, and you'd have to format and add files to it on another computer - not all that hard, but you'd need to have a second computer that has at least a floppy drive port to be able to move the floppy drive to it, and I realize not everyone has that these days.

"Solution 1: Boot-block BIOS

Modern motherboards have a boot-block BIOS. This is small area of the BIOS that doesn't get overwritten when you flash a BIOS. The boot-block BIOS only has support for the floppy drive. If you have a PCI video card you won't see anything on the screen because the boot-block BIOS only supports an ISA videocard.

Award: The boot-block BIOS will execute an AUTOEXEC.BAT file on a bootable diskette. Copy an Award flasher & the correct BIOS *.bin file on the floppy and execute it automaticly by putting awdflash *.bin in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file."

http://web.archive.org/web/20040130175321/htt … w.wimsbios.com/

Of course you have to have changed your folder file view settings to "Show system files" so you can open the autoexec.bat file on the floppy drive (after it has been formatted with the "System files only" option) with Wordpad and edit it.

This PDF has more complete instructions on how to set up a bootblock flash recovery disk:

Thank you for the speedy reply,

The functioning PC I have does not have connection for a floppy drive. At least not for the standard of that era. I suppose there may be an adapter I could purchase. Otherwise, I surmise I can purchase a floppy drive that operates over usb to create a new disk. I'll need to purchase floppy disks as well. Of course, at that point the cost of materials is greater than the floppy emulator I linked. But if it is a more fool proof way to do it then I will opt for that. Thank you for the resource. I'll be certain to read that.

If there are anymore suggestions I would be very receptive to them.

CWEastwood

CWEastwood wrote on 2022-04-01, 21:12:

Thank you for the speedy reply, […]
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Thank you for the speedy reply,

The functioning PC I have does not have connection for a floppy drive. At least not for the standard of that era. I suppose there may be an adapter I could purchase. Otherwise, I surmise I can purchase a floppy drive that operates over usb to create a new disk. I'll need to purchase floppy disks as well. Of course, at that point the cost of materials is greater than the floppy emulator I linked. But if it is a more fool proof way to do it then I will opt for that. Thank you for the resource. I'll be certain to read that.

If there are anymore suggestions I would be very receptive to them.

CWEastwood

The boot recovery disk ought to work with a properly configured floppy drive emulator, but I've no direct experience with those so I cannot give any further advice.

Hello Vogons,

I have an update to my problem but I believe I'm heading in the correct direction. To summarize the last few days:

I purchased the Gotek Floppy Emulator and began my journey to get the device recognized by Award BootBlock and also create a BIOS floppy image.

I had flashed the Gotek emulator with FlashFloppy but I was having trouble getting the device to be recognized. After consulting with the people on Github I decided to load the device with unmodified floppy images of Dos 5.xx - 6.xx just to see if I could flip between them on the device. https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy/discussions/633. When I plugged it in and started the machine the device boot into MS-DOS. I'm not sure which version. But what popped out on the screen was this:

Award BootBlock BIOS v1.0 Copyright (c) 1998, Award Software, Inc. […]
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Award BootBlock BIOS v1.0
Copyright (c) 1998, Award Software, Inc.

BIOS ROM checksum error
Keyboard error or no keyboard present ('cause I didn't have the keyboard plugged in)

Detecting floppy drive A media

Drive media is : 1.44MB
Starting MS-DOS

Followed by:

CD-ROM Device Driver for IDE (Four Channels Supported) (C)Copyright Oak Technology Inc. 1993-1996 Driver version : […]
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CD-ROM Device Driver for IDE (Four Channels Supported)
(C)Copyright Oak Technology Inc. 1993-1996
Driver version : V340
Device Name : Banana
No drives found, aborting installation

Packed file is corruptA:\>

It was getting late but seeing I was able to boot into DOS I wondered what about Windows. So I quickly loaded the USB with an floppy image of Win98 SE and it started. It asks if I want to start computer with or without cd-rom support or to view the help file. After choosing option 1 or 2 it appears to quickly test the PCI ports and then asks me if I want to partition the unformatted hard drive.

I powered down the computer as I was unsure if I should just go for the windows install or still sort out my bios issue (if even one really exists)

The following day I was able to create a bootable floppy image with the bios, flash utility and batch file. When I powered up the machine the computer checked for an A drive then proceeds to boot into Caldera DOS. I was then greeted with a colorful screen for the BIOS flash utility which was as follows

AwardBIOS Flash Utility V8.60B (C) Phoenix Technology Ltd. All Rights Reserved […]
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AwardBIOS Flash Utility V8.60B
(C) Phoenix Technology Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Flash Type -
File name to program : bata+56.bin

Message: Disk not ready. Try again (Y/N)

I pressed enter and the utility displayed the message

System was not new AWARD BIOS version! Please updata ROM BIOS first....

and then took me back to the command line.

Up until this point I had been following the directions of the link in the post above and formatting my batch file like this

@ECHO OFF
AWD860B BATA+56.BIN /py

That is to say I had been modifying my batch file to match the files on the floppy image. After coming across this writeup https://www.rom.by/Art_of_BIOS_flashing I instead took the advice to rename the flash utility file and .bin to match the batch example. I added a few switches and now had this

@ECHO OFF
AWDFLASH BIOS.BIN /py /sn /cd /cp /cc /f /r

When I plugged it and restarted the machine I was presented with a new screen which listed a bunch of switch commands and directions on how to use the command line along with an example currently in the command line.
I deleted what was in the command line and typed A:\>AWDFLASH BIOS.BIN along with a few switches and it brought me back to the colorful flash utility screen. The utility now showed bios.bin in the "File to be programmed box". I pressed enter and it began to flash "Please Wait!".

So I waited....and nothing happened. I waited a good half hour to no change. After trying the esc key to no results I reluctantly turned off the computer. It started back up and brought me back to the same screen with all the switch commands listed. I powered down and tried a new award flash utility, AWD860C, renamed it AWDFLASH and updated my floppy image. Again I got the "Please Wait!". So far I've twice been able to power down and up without looking too worse for wear.

Just hoping to get an idea of what I should try next. Should I even bother with the bios if I can get Windows to boot. Should I revisit my batch file. Should I keep trying with different BIOSes or flash utilities?

Try uniflash instead of AWDFLASH.