Precision 420 - Can't get into BIOS setup

I have a Precision 420 with the A13 BIOS. The system does not beep when
powered up. The splash screen comes up and says press F2 to enter the
BIOS. I do so and it changes the message to "Entering Setup." The splash
screen goes away and the BIOS gets to the point of checking for drives.
Then locks up hard. The last message it indicates is that Primary Drive 0
was not found. I have no hard drives or CD-ROM connected to the system,
just a floppy. The floppy drive light lights up before the system locks.

When the system locks, the keyboard becomes completely unresponsive- even
the Num Lock cannot be toggled. Occasionally (but not always), a message
comes up when the system is first powered on that says "Previous attempts
to boot the system have stopped at checkpoint [Vmgr]." I understand that
the Vmgr checkpoint is the PnP/PCI configuration stage. This coincides
with the diagnostic LED's in the back of the mini tower that indicate a
failure state S12 (YYGG with the dot over the rightmost Green) -
"possible system board resource conflict."

The power light stays on solid. The hard drive light is off.

I have reset the CMOS with the RTCRST jumper. I have removed the CMOS
battery for over an hour with the system unplugged. When rebooting it says
that the CMOS configuration is incomplete and the user must enter the BIOS
setup. If only it were possible.

Seems then like the system is attempting to assign identical resources
(the same IRQ?) to multiple devices and causing a problem. I tried
sticking an extra video card, network card, and sound card in the system
simultaneously, thinking that the BIOS might assign different resources to
those cards and free whatever conflict it currently has. I've tried
attaching an IDE hard disk, a SCSI hard disk, a CD-ROM to no effect.

I have even removed the Elsa Gloria video card (the only card in the
system) and attempted to boot, but could tell that it hung up in the same
spot because the floppy drive light came on and stayed on and the keyboard
locked at that point.

My question, finally, is - is there any way around this? I can't believe
the system is "dead." If there were a way to manually turn off the onboard
SCSI, IDE, or network controllers, possibly it might boot, as resources
wouldn't be allocated to them and I could get to the BIOS setup to
twiddle. Any way to do this or in some other fashion trick the thing into
getting into the BIOS setup?

Any trick keypresses or fancy things I could try when the system boots?
ANYTHING? Why would the BIOS be stupid enough to assign resources in a
conflicting manner to the point of not even being able to get into the
BIOS setup? If that is indeed what's happening, it's insane!

I've scoured the Internet, Usenet, and Dell's forums; obviously with no
luck or I wouldn't be posting here.

Any help would sure be appreciated.

Mike

Maybe try using a boot floppy and flash the BIOS?

"Mike" wrote in message
...
I have a Precision 420 with the A13 BIOS. The system does not beep when
powered up. The splash screen comes up and says press F2 to enter the
BIOS. I do so and it changes the message to "Entering Setup." The splash
screen goes away and the BIOS gets to the point of checking for drives.
Then locks up hard. The last message it indicates is that Primary Drive 0
was not found. I have no hard drives or CD-ROM connected to the system,
just a floppy. The floppy drive light lights up before the system locks.

When the system locks, the keyboard becomes completely unresponsive- even
the Num Lock cannot be toggled. Occasionally (but not always), a message
comes up when the system is first powered on that says "Previous attempts
to boot the system have stopped at checkpoint [Vmgr]." I understand that
the Vmgr checkpoint is the PnP/PCI configuration stage. This coincides
with the diagnostic LED's in the back of the mini tower that indicate a
failure state S12 (YYGG with the dot over the rightmost Green) -
"possible system board resource conflict."

The power light stays on solid. The hard drive light is off.

I have reset the CMOS with the RTCRST jumper. I have removed the CMOS
battery for over an hour with the system unplugged. When rebooting it says
that the CMOS configuration is incomplete and the user must enter the BIOS
setup. If only it were possible.

Seems then like the system is attempting to assign identical resources
(the same IRQ?) to multiple devices and causing a problem. I tried
sticking an extra video card, network card, and sound card in the system
simultaneously, thinking that the BIOS might assign different resources to
those cards and free whatever conflict it currently has. I've tried
attaching an IDE hard disk, a SCSI hard disk, a CD-ROM to no effect.

I have even removed the Elsa Gloria video card (the only card in the
system) and attempted to boot, but could tell that it hung up in the same
spot because the floppy drive light came on and stayed on and the keyboard
locked at that point.

My question, finally, is - is there any way around this? I can't believe
the system is "dead." If there were a way to manually turn off the onboard
SCSI, IDE, or network controllers, possibly it might boot, as resources
wouldn't be allocated to them and I could get to the BIOS setup to
twiddle. Any way to do this or in some other fashion trick the thing into
getting into the BIOS setup?

Any trick keypresses or fancy things I could try when the system boots?
ANYTHING? Why would the BIOS be stupid enough to assign resources in a
conflicting manner to the point of not even being able to get into the
BIOS setup? If that is indeed what's happening, it's insane!

I've scoured the Internet, Usenet, and Dell's forums; obviously with no
luck or I wouldn't be posting here.

Any help would sure be appreciated.

Mike

That would be a good idea. Sorry though, I thought I was clear in my
message, but after rereading it I wasn't. I indicated that the floppy
drive light came on, but neglected to mention that it STAYS on and doesn't
even attempt to read the floppy. I tried sticking a floppy in the drive
and the drive locks up just as it does without the floppy; it doesn't read
it.

Any other ideas? I'm wondering if there is some crazy undocumented
feature to deal with the BIOS conflict. Surely Dell wouldn't be dumb
enough to create a BIOS that causes the system to be unusable??

What's worse, it doesn't look like the BIOS is a socketed chip.
Wonderful.


In article , "PC Gladiator"
wrote:

Maybe try using a boot floppy and flash the BIOS?

"Mike" wrote in message
...
I have a Precision 420 with the A13 BIOS. The system does not beep when

a floppy drive light that remains on is a strongly suggests that the data
cable is installed backwards on the floppy drive. given that you say the
hard drives have been removed from this system i would suspect this cable
was also removed and then installed incorrectly. this condition should not
prevent the system from entering the bios, or booting from a hard disk if
one were present, so there is something more going on here... the system
has both an ide and a scsi controllers. you are not supposed to use both,
but rather choose one or the other type for all of your drives. if you use
the ide then the primary and secondary drive type should be set to auto. if
you use scsi then they should be set to none. the scsi controller should
have a cable connected to it that is properly terminated (again, i wonder
what the cable situation is in this computer, often people that pilfer
drives out of a system also take the cables.... striking f2 or
cntrl-alt-enter during post (power on self test) should put you into the
bios. since it doesn't, the next thing to consider is the code produced by
the four diagnostics leds on the back panel. they are found between the
network connector and the two usb ports. the code they produce can be
looked up at support.dell.com or you could post the detailed code here for
someone to translate for you. the leds are dual colored (yellow or green)
and may be on or off. one thought about the boot delay is that the system
may have been previously configured to boot from a network device that is no
longer present... in that case you may have to way several minutes for it to
time out.

"Mike" wrote in message
...
That would be a good idea. Sorry though, I thought I was clear in my
message, but after rereading it I wasn't. I indicated that the floppy
drive light came on, but neglected to mention that it STAYS on and doesn't
even attempt to read the floppy. I tried sticking a floppy in the drive
and the drive locks up just as it does without the floppy; it doesn't read
it.

Any other ideas? I'm wondering if there is some crazy undocumented
feature to deal with the BIOS conflict. Surely Dell wouldn't be dumb
enough to create a BIOS that causes the system to be unusable??

What's worse, it doesn't look like the BIOS is a socketed chip.
Wonderful.


In article , "PC Gladiator"
wrote:

Maybe try using a boot floppy and flash the BIOS?

"Mike" wrote in message
...
I have a Precision 420 with the A13 BIOS. The system does not beep when

Thank you for your response.

The floppy cable is tabbed and cannot be installed backwards. Even with
the floppy disconnected at the motherboard, the system still locked up in
the same point during the boot as evidenced by the keyboard locking up
(and paying attention to the time it takes to reach that point). Please
see my initial rambling post for the diagnostic LED's. If the system
were somehow set to boot from a net device (even after the BIOS was reset)
I would doubt that it would cause the keyboard to lock up while waiting to
time out, but I suppose it could happen. Unfortunately the system has
been left on for at least ten minutes at the "lockup point" with no more
activity so I'm pretty sure that's not it. Plus, the BIOS would surely
allow you entry before demanding attention from a net device, or at least
I would hope.

In article , "Christopher Muto"
wrote:

a floppy drive light that remains on is a strongly suggests that the
data cable is installed backwards on the floppy drive. given that you
say the hard drives have been removed from this system i would suspect
this cable was also removed and then installed incorrectly. this
condition should not prevent the system from entering the bios, or
booting from a hard disk if one were present, so there is something more
going on here... the system has both an ide and a scsi controllers. you
are not supposed to use both, but rather choose one or the other type
for all of your drives. if you use the ide then the primary and
secondary drive type should be set to auto. if you use scsi then they
should be set to none. the scsi controller should have a cable
connected to it that is properly terminated (again, i wonder what the
cable situation is in this computer, often people that pilfer drives out
of a system also take the cables.... striking f2 or cntrl-alt-enter
during post (power on self test) should put you into the bios. since it
doesn't, the next thing to consider is the code produced by the four
diagnostics leds on the back panel. they are found between the network
connector and the two usb ports. the code they produce can be looked up
at support.dell.com or you could post the detailed code here for someone
to translate for you. the leds are dual colored (yellow or green) and
may be on or off. one thought about the boot delay is that the system
may have been previously configured to boot from a network device that
is no longer present... in that case you may have to way several minutes
for it to time out.

i re-read you original post in its entirety and it sounds like you have done
everything possible... the motherboard itself appears to be the problem. the
only thing that you did not mention trying is reseating the memory and
processor or try to boot with a usb keyboard/mouse... this, may not help,
but it is the only thing left to try. curious about the history of the
system... the fact that the drives were pulled seems to indicate that
someone else may have given up on trying to resolve the problem.

"Mike" wrote in message
...
Thank you for your response.

The floppy cable is tabbed and cannot be installed backwards. Even with
the floppy disconnected at the motherboard, the system still locked up in
the same point during the boot as evidenced by the keyboard locking up
(and paying attention to the time it takes to reach that point). Please
see my initial rambling post for the diagnostic LED's. If the system
were somehow set to boot from a net device (even after the BIOS was reset)
I would doubt that it would cause the keyboard to lock up while waiting to
time out, but I suppose it could happen. Unfortunately the system has
been left on for at least ten minutes at the "lockup point" with no more
activity so I'm pretty sure that's not it. Plus, the BIOS would surely
allow you entry before demanding attention from a net device, or at least
I would hope.

In article , "Christopher Muto"
wrote:

a floppy drive light that remains on is a strongly suggests that the
data cable is installed backwards on the floppy drive. given that you
say the hard drives have been removed from this system i would suspect
this cable was also removed and then installed incorrectly. this
condition should not prevent the system from entering the bios, or
booting from a hard disk if one were present, so there is something more
going on here... the system has both an ide and a scsi controllers. you
are not supposed to use both, but rather choose one or the other type
for all of your drives. if you use the ide then the primary and
secondary drive type should be set to auto. if you use scsi then they
should be set to none. the scsi controller should have a cable
connected to it that is properly terminated (again, i wonder what the
cable situation is in this computer, often people that pilfer drives out
of a system also take the cables.... striking f2 or cntrl-alt-enter
during post (power on self test) should put you into the bios. since it
doesn't, the next thing to consider is the code produced by the four
diagnostics leds on the back panel. they are found between the network
connector and the two usb ports. the code they produce can be looked up
at support.dell.com or you could post the detailed code here for someone
to translate for you. the leds are dual colored (yellow or green) and
may be on or off. one thought about the boot delay is that the system
may have been previously configured to boot from a network device that
is no longer present... in that case you may have to way several minutes
for it to time out.

there are two p420 motherboard currently on ebay and they look like one can
be had for as little as $25. not an endorsement of either seller. check
them out for yourself before placing a bid.

"Mike" wrote in message
...
Thank you for your response.

The floppy cable is tabbed and cannot be installed backwards. Even with
the floppy disconnected at the motherboard, the system still locked up in
the same point during the boot as evidenced by the keyboard locking up
(and paying attention to the time it takes to reach that point). Please
see my initial rambling post for the diagnostic LED's. If the system
were somehow set to boot from a net device (even after the BIOS was reset)
I would doubt that it would cause the keyboard to lock up while waiting to
time out, but I suppose it could happen. Unfortunately the system has
been left on for at least ten minutes at the "lockup point" with no more
activity so I'm pretty sure that's not it. Plus, the BIOS would surely
allow you entry before demanding attention from a net device, or at least
I would hope.

In article , "Christopher Muto"
wrote:

a floppy drive light that remains on is a strongly suggests that the
data cable is installed backwards on the floppy drive. given that you
say the hard drives have been removed from this system i would suspect
this cable was also removed and then installed incorrectly. this
condition should not prevent the system from entering the bios, or
booting from a hard disk if one were present, so there is something more
going on here... the system has both an ide and a scsi controllers. you
are not supposed to use both, but rather choose one or the other type
for all of your drives. if you use the ide then the primary and
secondary drive type should be set to auto. if you use scsi then they
should be set to none. the scsi controller should have a cable
connected to it that is properly terminated (again, i wonder what the
cable situation is in this computer, often people that pilfer drives out
of a system also take the cables.... striking f2 or cntrl-alt-enter
during post (power on self test) should put you into the bios. since it
doesn't, the next thing to consider is the code produced by the four
diagnostics leds on the back panel. they are found between the network
connector and the two usb ports. the code they produce can be looked up
at support.dell.com or you could post the detailed code here for someone
to translate for you. the leds are dual colored (yellow or green) and
may be on or off. one thought about the boot delay is that the system
may have been previously configured to boot from a network device that
is no longer present... in that case you may have to way several minutes
for it to time out.

The history of the system... well, I can give you that.

Bought the system off eBay for a reasonable price. Came with an 8GB SCSI
drive. I had plans to install Debian Linux on the SCSI drive and use two
IDE drives for data storage in a software RAID1. Of course these plans
were made before seeing the blurb in the Precision 420's manual (Dell does
not support using both SCSI and IDE disks simultaneously blah blah).
So I had indeed set up the system with the OS on the SCSI drive and had
put a newly-acquired refurbished IDE drive on the primary IDE channel. It
worked great for a week and I was fairly ecstatic about it all. Later on
I had planned on adding a master drive to the secondary IDE channel for
the RAID1 but for now was just running the single IDE drive.

After the first week, the IDE drive started developing bad sectors. It
wasn't a controller issue, as successive filesystem checks indicated
failures in the same or nearby sectors. OK, this was a refurbed disk, so
I sent it back to the supplier and got a new one.

In the mean time, the system was running with just a SCSI disk for that
week. No problems.

Got a different refurbed IDE drive back. Put it back on the primary
channel as the only device with no jumpers set on the drive. Booted the
system. The kernel loaded and started to initialize the system, but then
started choking on the SCSI drive- I kept getting repeated CRC errors and
the like. Figuring it had somehow gotten scrogged, I beat it with a
hammer. Just kidding. I removed the IDE drive to make sure it wasn't
somehow interfering with the SCSI drive. No change; still had the CRC
errors reading from the SCSI drive.

I reset the SCSI BIOS to default values. No change. Turned off the IDE
controller in the BIOS and tried again, just in case it was causing a
conflict with the SCSI controller. No change. So I figured that just in
case there was some kind of crazy problem with the computer's BIOS, I
reset it with the jumper (in retrospect I don't think that could have been
the problem but I was searching for clues). After that, the system
started doing what it is now.

You know, it irks me that for one, I missed that section of the manual
that says you can't use both controllers simultaneously, and two, that
Dell actually built a system like that. Why in the HELL would you have
both controllers but restrict the user to one or the other? So, OK- they
made a system like that. But if it were going to cause damage to the
system, why wouldn't they make the IDE and SCSI controller BIOS options
mutually exclusive?

Since the system ran for a week without problems, I'm not pointing the
finger at the person I bought it from. I am the one to blame but I'm
****ed with the BIOS for being unable to recover or I'm ****ed with the
motherboard for having a problem using both controllers at once.

I had high hopes for this system because I THOUGHT it satisfied all of my
requirements, including dual CPU's and simultaneous SCSI/IDE.

I have considered buying a replacement mobo via eBay, but I'm not sure at
this point. Obviously I won't try the simultaneous thing again (if that
is indeed what caused the problem) if I do go for a replacement mobo, but
I've got to figure out some other factors (whether I want to just run IDE
drives). I might just buy a cheap alternate standard form-factor P3
slot1 motherboard and scavenge the parts from the Dell.

What a disappointment.

Thank you for trying to help.


In article , "Christopher Muto"
wrote:

i re-read you original post in its entirety and it sounds like you have
done everything possible... the motherboard itself appears to be the
problem. the only thing that you did not mention trying is reseating the
memory and processor or try to boot with a usb keyboard/mouse... this,
may not help, but it is the only thing left to try. curious about the
history of the system... the fact that the drives were pulled seems to
indicate that someone else may have given up on trying to resolve the
problem.

"Mike" wrote in message
...
Thank you for your response.

The floppy cable is tabbed and cannot be installed backwards. Even
with the floppy disconnected at the motherboard, the system still
locked up in the same point during the boot as evidenced by the
keyboard locking up (and paying attention to the time it takes to reach
that point). Please see my initial rambling post for the diagnostic
LED's. If the system were somehow set to boot from a net device (even
after the BIOS was reset) I would doubt that it would cause the
keyboard to lock up while waiting to time out, but I suppose it could
happen. Unfortunately the system has been left on for at least ten
minutes at the "lockup point" with no more activity so I'm pretty sure
that's not it. Plus, the BIOS would surely allow you entry before
demanding attention from a net device, or at least I would hope.

In article , "Christopher Muto"
wrote:

a floppy drive light that remains on is a strongly suggests that the
data cable is installed backwards on the floppy drive. given that
you say the hard drives have been removed from this system i would
suspect this cable was also removed and then installed incorrectly.
this condition should not prevent the system from entering the bios,
or booting from a hard disk if one were present, so there is
something more going on here... the system has both an ide and a
scsi controllers. you are not supposed to use both, but rather choose
one or the other type for all of your drives. if you use the ide
then the primary and secondary drive type should be set to auto. if
you use scsi then they should be set to none. the scsi controller
should have a cable connected to it that is properly terminated
(again, i wonder what the cable situation is in this computer, often
people that pilfer drives out of a system also take the cables....
striking f2 or cntrl-alt-enter during post (power on self test)
should put you into the bios. since it doesn't, the next thing to
consider is the code produced by the four diagnostics leds on the
back panel. they are found between the network connector and the two
usb ports. the code they produce can be looked up at
support.dell.com or you could post the detailed code here for someone
to translate for you. the leds are dual colored (yellow or green) and
may be on or off. one thought about the boot delay is that the
system may have been previously configured to boot from a network
device that is no longer present... in that case you may have to way
several minutes for it to time out.

i agree with your comment about why the bios doesn't make the choice of
controllers mutually exclusive. this is why i mentioned it in my first
post. if i understand you correctly, you had the primary controller set to
scsi and the secondary controller set to ide. since the primary boot device
is the primary controller set to scsi and that you have removed the scsi
drives i wonder if the cable is still installed. the supplied cable should
be a terminated cable that you connect drives to that are unterminated. if
the cable is missing then the entire channel is unterminated. possible
source of the problem, but i can't say for sure as i have not tried to boot
one of these with/without the cable and no drives. seems like you should be
able to get in if you could reset the bios. perhaps leaving the cmos
battery out for just an hour wasn't long enough (memory is much more power
efficient that it used to be, could take much longer). i would try removing
it and leaving it out for at least a day... beside, at this point it seems
you have little to loose and it is minimal effort. other than that i am at
a loss.

"Mike" wrote in message
...
The history of the system... well, I can give you that.

Bought the system off eBay for a reasonable price. Came with an 8GB SCSI
drive. I had plans to install Debian Linux on the SCSI drive and use two
IDE drives for data storage in a software RAID1. Of course these plans
were made before seeing the blurb in the Precision 420's manual (Dell does
not support using both SCSI and IDE disks simultaneously blah blah).
So I had indeed set up the system with the OS on the SCSI drive and had
put a newly-acquired refurbished IDE drive on the primary IDE channel. It
worked great for a week and I was fairly ecstatic about it all. Later on
I had planned on adding a master drive to the secondary IDE channel for
the RAID1 but for now was just running the single IDE drive.

After the first week, the IDE drive started developing bad sectors. It
wasn't a controller issue, as successive filesystem checks indicated
failures in the same or nearby sectors. OK, this was a refurbed disk, so
I sent it back to the supplier and got a new one.

In the mean time, the system was running with just a SCSI disk for that
week. No problems.

Got a different refurbed IDE drive back. Put it back on the primary
channel as the only device with no jumpers set on the drive. Booted the
system. The kernel loaded and started to initialize the system, but then
started choking on the SCSI drive- I kept getting repeated CRC errors and
the like. Figuring it had somehow gotten scrogged, I beat it with a
hammer. Just kidding. I removed the IDE drive to make sure it wasn't
somehow interfering with the SCSI drive. No change; still had the CRC
errors reading from the SCSI drive.

I reset the SCSI BIOS to default values. No change. Turned off the IDE
controller in the BIOS and tried again, just in case it was causing a
conflict with the SCSI controller. No change. So I figured that just in
case there was some kind of crazy problem with the computer's BIOS, I
reset it with the jumper (in retrospect I don't think that could have been
the problem but I was searching for clues). After that, the system
started doing what it is now.

You know, it irks me that for one, I missed that section of the manual
that says you can't use both controllers simultaneously, and two, that
Dell actually built a system like that. Why in the HELL would you have
both controllers but restrict the user to one or the other? So, OK- they
made a system like that. But if it were going to cause damage to the
system, why wouldn't they make the IDE and SCSI controller BIOS options
mutually exclusive?

Since the system ran for a week without problems, I'm not pointing the
finger at the person I bought it from. I am the one to blame but I'm
****ed with the BIOS for being unable to recover or I'm ****ed with the
motherboard for having a problem using both controllers at once.

I had high hopes for this system because I THOUGHT it satisfied all of my
requirements, including dual CPU's and simultaneous SCSI/IDE.

I have considered buying a replacement mobo via eBay, but I'm not sure at
this point. Obviously I won't try the simultaneous thing again (if that
is indeed what caused the problem) if I do go for a replacement mobo, but
I've got to figure out some other factors (whether I want to just run IDE
drives). I might just buy a cheap alternate standard form-factor P3
slot1 motherboard and scavenge the parts from the Dell.

What a disappointment.

Thank you for trying to help.


In article , "Christopher Muto"
wrote:

i re-read you original post in its entirety and it sounds like you have
done everything possible... the motherboard itself appears to be the
problem. the only thing that you did not mention trying is reseating the
memory and processor or try to boot with a usb keyboard/mouse... this,
may not help, but it is the only thing left to try. curious about the
history of the system... the fact that the drives were pulled seems to
indicate that someone else may have given up on trying to resolve the
problem.

"Mike" wrote in message
...
Thank you for your response.

The floppy cable is tabbed and cannot be installed backwards. Even
with the floppy disconnected at the motherboard, the system still
locked up in the same point during the boot as evidenced by the
keyboard locking up (and paying attention to the time it takes to reach
that point). Please see my initial rambling post for the diagnostic
LED's. If the system were somehow set to boot from a net device (even
after the BIOS was reset) I would doubt that it would cause the
keyboard to lock up while waiting to time out, but I suppose it could
happen. Unfortunately the system has been left on for at least ten
minutes at the "lockup point" with no more activity so I'm pretty sure
that's not it. Plus, the BIOS would surely allow you entry before
demanding attention from a net device, or at least I would hope.

In article , "Christopher Muto"
wrote:

a floppy drive light that remains on is a strongly suggests that the
data cable is installed backwards on the floppy drive. given that
you say the hard drives have been removed from this system i would
suspect this cable was also removed and then installed incorrectly.
this condition should not prevent the system from entering the bios,
or booting from a hard disk if one were present, so there is
something more going on here... the system has both an ide and a
scsi controllers. you are not supposed to use both, but rather choose
one or the other type for all of your drives. if you use the ide
then the primary and secondary drive type should be set to auto. if
you use scsi then they should be set to none. the scsi controller
should have a cable connected to it that is properly terminated
(again, i wonder what the cable situation is in this computer, often
people that pilfer drives out of a system also take the cables....
striking f2 or cntrl-alt-enter during post (power on self test)
should put you into the bios. since it doesn't, the next thing to
consider is the code produced by the four diagnostics leds on the
back panel. they are found between the network connector and the two
usb ports. the code they produce can be looked up at
support.dell.com or you could post the detailed code here for someone
to translate for you. the leds are dual colored (yellow or green) and
may be on or off. one thought about the boot delay is that the
system may have been previously configured to boot from a network
device that is no longer present... in that case you may have to way
several minutes for it to time out.

The BIOS options only allow you to turn the controllers on or off, however
you can set the boot order, just to make sure we're on the same
wavelength. However- no, the cable was no longer installed. I missed
that point in your first post- it didn't dawn on me that you were
indicating that I might have had an unterminated SCSI channel. Excellent
idea! Unfortunately, the reinstallation of the cable had no effect- but
that really was a good thought.

I have tried leaving the battery out for three days while on vacation.

Thanks Christopher, for the input. You've had more ideas and suggestions
than anything I've gotten off the Dell Community Forums (NOTHING, which is
sad). If there is any way I can get the system up again, which is very
doubtful at this point, I will certainly post back so people scouring the
net like I did might find something useful.

If I don't reply, the machine is a high-tech boat anchor.

Mike


In article , "Christopher Muto"
wrote:

i agree with your comment about why the bios doesn't make the choice of
controllers mutually exclusive. this is why i mentioned it in my first
post. if i understand you correctly, you had the primary controller set
to scsi and the secondary controller set to ide. since the primary boot
device is the primary controller set to scsi and that you have removed
the scsi drives i wonder if the cable is still installed. the supplied
cable should be a terminated cable that you connect drives to that are
unterminated. if the cable is missing then the entire channel is
unterminated. possible source of the problem, but i can't say for sure
as i have not tried to boot one of these with/without the cable and no
drives. seems like you should be able to get in if you could reset the
bios. perhaps leaving the cmos battery out for just an hour wasn't long
enough (memory is much more power efficient that it used to be, could
take much longer). i would try removing it and leaving it out for at
least a day... beside, at this point it seems you have little to loose
and it is minimal effort. other than that i am at a loss.