I made passing mention of this in my other thread about sound cards, but decided to make a separate topic so not to derail that thread.

In the midst of messing with sound cards, a new problem arose. The PC350 I'm using suddenly started going directly into BIOS setup on bootup, with no interaction on my part. It seems to POST normally, just the standard single beep, and any changes I make in setup are retained. But, even when I save and exit, it reboots and goes straight back into BIOS setup.

I started by clearing the CMOS, checking (and replacing) the battery, verifying all the little jumper and switch settings. Reset the time and all that, saved changes, still goes into setup. Pulled out all the expansion cards and unhooked the drives, all except the floppy. It registered the changes, updated the settings, but still goes straight to setup upon boot. Tried different RAM, same thing.

The keyboard is connected through a KVM... I tried hooking it up directly and got a beep code that indicates a keyboard controller error (and no boot at all past that), and the same happens with a different keyboard. This is the strongest possibility as the source of the problem, but I don't know why it would somewhat work through a KVM. Also, with no keyboard connected at all, it will POST with a 301 keyboard error message, and will go straight into setup again.

My usual last-resort step would be to try reflashing the BIOS, and I have a floppy containing an updated BIOS, however, it won't boot from a floppy (loads setup before getting to that point). There is a BIOS recovery jumper, which I tried, and it will load from the floppy with that, bunch of noise from the floppy drive followed by the two quick high-pitched warning beeps that most flashing programs play, but I get no video signal, so I can't see how to actually do a recovery. I'm doubtful that it would do any good anyhow, since the BIOS itself doesn't seem to be corrupted.

I'm thinking I'm probably outta luck here. Any other ideas, or should I start hunting for a replacement system?