IBM 5155, booting into basic

[gleegum]

I got this machine with a missing floppy drive, but with a ST238R hard drive and controller.
It gives me disk error, so I removed the hard drive controller card.
I thought the machine would boot into cassette basic when it didn't find any drives, it just get stuck in the error saying "any key to reboot" (see attached picture).
why is not booting into BASIC?

Also upon pressing any key the machine prints the character to screen but it doesn't reboot.

thanks

 

[krebizfan]

It looks like you have a clone BIOS installed so it might not have Cassette BASIC at all and probably won't start Cassette BASIC even if the ROMs are still installed.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Are you sure it's the original motherboard in the machine? It's a little odd someone would swap a different BIOS into a 5155. It looks like FIC sold its white-box clone parts under the "LEO" brand name, maybe someone up/side-graded your 5155 with the guts of one of them.

 

[gleegum]

I see now, it's not the original motherboard, but the case is the IBM one together with the keyboard.
So no Cassette BASIC on this ROM right? So probably as Eudimorphodon says.

thanks!

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Interesting; if you search for that "ERSO" BIOS you'll get a hit for a DAK branded machine that's also a 10mhz XT clone. The manual for that DAK machine is linked off the site, you should see if it matches your board, could very well be the same OEM.