Forcing a 386 to boot up without waiting for user to "Press F1"

[Bill-kun]

I'm going to classify this as hardware since it's not the OS, but the BIOS or something even more foundational. I'm not sure.

My JPL tall tower 386 has a boot-up sequence that searches the hard drive channels and reports what it finds, then requires the user to type F1 or F2 to either boot up or enter the BIOS, respectively. If no key is pressed it simply waits there forever. I'd like to make it so it defaults to boot-up after a few seconds, because I want to avoid the possibility where I forget to press F1, accidentally leave it for a few hours or days, and it burns the really nice CRT screen. But I think this is part of the BIOS.

Is there an easy way I can configure this? I don't see any such option in the BIOS setup screen.

This is an older photograph; these are not the drives currently connected. This is the "Press F1" screen.


Here is the BIOS screen. Again, this photograph is older; I have different hard drives connected now. I don't see an option to bypass "Press F1."

 

[vwestlife]

Set the keyboard to "Not installed". Then the BIOS should not ask the user to press any keys during POST (hopefully).

 

[Timo W.]

That first screen which asks for F1 is from the IDE controller's BIOS. You need to press F2 to get into that and look there.

The mainboard BIOS in your 2nd screen is unrelated to that message.

 

[Ruud]

IMHO there is a cause for this message and my first guess is an empty battery.

My experience is that setting the keyboard to "Not installed" won't help.

Some menus provide the feature to ignore errors. But IIRC it was on the first page and I don't see it here. OTOH it it included the possibility to ignore keyboard errors like not attaching one. So the feature for telling the BIOS there is a keyboard present or not would not be needed then.

Good luck!

 

[vwestlife]

The question is, do you actually have three Seagate ST157A drives installed, or is that just what the card is detecting? I noticed the D drive has different parameters than the other two and has an apostrophe at the end, which may be its weird way of indicating some kind of error with the configuration.

 

[Timo W.]

To repeat myself:

That first screen which asks for F1 is from the IDE controller's BIOS. You need to press F2 to get into that and look there.

There is NO ERROR and the message comes from the IDE controller he uses. This has absolutely nothing to do with the BIOS. Is no one looking at the actual sceenshots?

 

[tradde]

The question is, do you actually have three Seagate ST157A drives installed, or is that just what the card is detecting? I noticed the D drive has different parameters than the other two and has an apostrophe at the end, which may be its weird way of indicating some kind of error with the configuration.

If you read his note under that pic, you'd see he says "This is an older picture, and he's using different drives now".

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Some more clarification about this config would definitely be nice; the main question I have is what the IDE card configuration actually is; is there an accessory IDE controller in there that's addressed at a "non-standard" (or at least the normal secondary/tertiary/whatever) location(s) and has it's own BIOS (and there's nothing connected to an IDE controller the built-in BIOS wants to own?), or is this one of those semi-sketchy situations where there's an IDE controller in there that hardware-wise is at the standard 0x1F0 locations where the built-in BIOS expects to probe for hard drives but there's also an add-on BIOS (either in a motherboard socket or in a slotted card) that's intended to override the main BIOS and depends on the latter being set to "hard disk not installed" for the primary/secondary slots?

If it's the latter (or even the former, if you don't have at least one drive on the primary channel under BIOS control) some BIOSes just hate that and will stubbornly assume there's something wrong if they don't have a hard disk installed, thus forcing you to hit a key to continue. Offhand I'm not sure what the best solution is, this is one of those problems I've heard of but never had a machine so equipped to experience it personally.

 

[vwestlife]

I have seen it happen where if you have an IDE card installed with its own BIOS, even if you disable the motherboard's on-board IDE port(s), it will detect the drive(s) you have connected to the card and complain that you don't have it configured in the motherboard's BIOS settings.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Back in the beforetimes I did the opposite of a BIOS upgrade to run three drives in a 486 with an old creaky BIOS (the second IDE port was on a Soundblaster card), IE, I installed EZ-Drive. I remember it working well and avoiding these sorts of issues, but it does steal a little bit of conventional RAM.

 

[Bill-kun]

That first screen which asks for F1 is from the IDE controller's BIOS. You need to press F2 to get into that and look there.

The mainboard BIOS in your 2nd screen is unrelated to that message.

Pressing F2 on the first screen is what gets the user to the mainboard BIOS in the second screen.

I highlighted the keyboard Installed-Not Installed and pressed the help key. Here is what it said.


Unfortunately, changing it from Installed to Not Installed does nothing.

Some more clarification about this config would definitely be nice; the main question I have is what the IDE card configuration actually is; is there an accessory IDE controller in there that's addressed at a "non-standard" (or at least the normal secondary/tertiary/whatever) location(s) and has it's own BIOS (and there's nothing connected to an IDE controller the built-in BIOS wants to own?), or is this one of those semi-sketchy situations where there's an IDE controller in there that hardware-wise is at the standard 0x1F0 locations where the built-in BIOS expects to probe for hard drives but there's also an add-on BIOS (either in a motherboard socket or in a slotted card) that's intended to override the main BIOS and depends on the latter being set to "hard disk not installed" for the primary/secondary slots?

If it's the latter (or even the former, if you don't have at least one drive on the primary channel under BIOS control) some BIOSes just hate that and will stubbornly assume there's something wrong if they don't have a hard disk installed, thus forcing you to hit a key to continue. Offhand I'm not sure what the best solution is, this is one of those problems I've heard of but never had a machine so equipped to experience it personally.

I forgot to say that the controller card has a controller BIOS of its own. The controller card is an SIIG model CI_5000.

Regardless of what the system BIOS is told by the user about hard drives in the system BIOS screen, the controller BIOS is intelligent enough to query connected hard drives for their ID and CHS and will register them. But I think that is only for hard drives (and maybe CD-ROMs and other removable media), not for keyboards, which get plugged into the motherboard.

 

[Plasma]

The F1/F2 message is coming from the main system BIOS, not the IDE BIOS. I know this because I have a dump of the SIIG IDE BIOS.

Typically when you see that message it's because the CMOS config does not match the detected hardware. So the BIOS assumes the battery was removed and the user needs to enter setup to correct the settings.

I see your Display is set to CGA80 but based on the text resolution it looks like you've got a VGA. If you change Display to EGA/VGA and press F10, I suspect the F1/F2 message will go away.

 

[Bill-kun]

The F1/F2 message is coming from the main system BIOS, not the IDE BIOS. I know this because I have a dump of the SIIG IDE BIOS.

Typically when you see that message it's because the CMOS config does not match the detected hardware. So the BIOS assumes the battery was removed and the user needs to enter setup to correct the settings.

I see your Display is set to CGA80 but based on the text resolution it looks like you've got a VGA. If you change Display to EGA/VGA and press F10, I suspect the F1/F2 message will go away.

Pressing F2 at the prompt does have a cyan BIOS screen tell me that the configuration is incorrect; that is normal. It takes me to the normal BIOS selection screen.

The options for Display are:

• Not Installed
• VGA/EGA
• CGA40
• CGA80
• Mono

I've always had it at CGA80. Choosing CGA40 or CGA80 seems to make no difference between them; the screen is 80 characters wide regardless. Choosing anything other than CGA40 or CGA80 does result in no F1/F2 prompt unlike in the first screenshot in post #1 above. The controller BIOS then does not recognize the hard drives and it ends up saying no boot device is available. Booting from a floppy then trying "c:" or "d:" results in drive not found.

What the heck??

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Some motherboards have a jumper or switch that has to be set appropriately for VGA/EGA in addition to/instead of the BIOS entry for it, it might be worth making sure you're not having that problem.

I still suspect this could be a more basic incompatibility between your machine and the BIOS on that card.

 

[Plasma]

Try setting hard disk 1 and/or 2 to Type 1 in the setup.

 

[Bill-kun]

Try setting hard disk 1 and/or 2 to Type 1 in the setup.

No effect.

Some motherboards have a jumper or switch that has to be set appropriately for VGA/EGA in addition to/instead of the BIOS entry for it, it might be worth making sure you're not having that problem.

I still suspect this could be a more basic incompatibility between your machine and the BIOS on that card.

It seems unlikely that the controller card and motherboard are incompatible; it looks like they both came as part of the original computer.

The motherboard is a Micronics model 09-00021. Attached info on that. There is a set of 8 DIP switches on the motherboard, which includes whether the video is monochrome or color (switch 6).

• View attachment 00021.txt
• 

The video card is a Trident TVGA8816CS_D1 video card. It has a monochrome monitor connector, a VGA connector, and a set of 6 DIP switches.

• https://retronn.de/imports/hwgal/hw_trident_8800cs.html which leads to the manual PDF at https://retronn.de/ftp/driver/Trident/8800CS/Able_VGA_IV_Graphics_Card.pdf -- see section 2.2 for DIP switches and 2.3 for jumpers.
• I think the 6 switches are currently set as 000000.
• 

Okay, so that lays out what I have to do:

1. Open the case and examine motherboard switch 6 setting
2. Examine the video card switches
3. Make sure the motherboard and video card don't conflict.
4. Make sure the system BIOS agrees with both the motherboard and the video card

I will report back the results.

 

[Plasma]

I am doubtful that IDE controller was part of the original computer since it's from 1995 and the 386 was very dated by then. Usually those upgrade controllers were added later to bypass the 504 MB or 2 GB limits.

I think your display is already set correctly if you aren't getting the F1/F2 message. What size hard drive are you using? If it's less than 500 MB you can just disable the SIIG BIOS and set your hard drive in the main BIOS.

 

[Hugo Holden]

It sounds like the type of problem, I would fix by wiring a small sub circuit into the keyboard a small mosfet or even tiny DIL relay with a small timing circuit, probably just a capacitor, a few resistors & a diode, so the after the computer was powered it simulated a push of the F1 key, but then I have a natural inclination to solve a problem at the hardware level, where it might be possible, in some cases to do it in the firmware/bios or software by not having to add any hardware, which then makes the hardware solution look very very silly.

IF the F1 key is stuck down, does it boot the way you want on power on ? if it did, you could just have a circuit that effectively electrically closed the F1 key for a few seconds after power up and then released it, it would be very simple.

 

[Bill-kun]

I am doubtful that IDE controller was part of the original computer since it's from 1995 and the 386 was very dated by then. Usually those upgrade controllers were added later to bypass the 504 MB or 2 GB limits.

Now that you mention it, it does make sense that the controller was probably added a while after the computer was initially bought, due to hard drive size increases. That explains the difference in dates I've seen or estimated on this computer's internal parts.

I think your display is already set correctly if you aren't getting the F1/F2 message. What size hard drive are you using? If it's less than 500 MB you can just disable the SIIG BIOS and set your hard drive in the main BIOS.

I can't bypass the controller card BIOS; I've tried in the past by moving the right jumper(s) on it and somehow it doesn't make a difference. Plus, the system BIOS doesn't let me customize the CHS anyway; without the controller card BIOS, either the hard drive is one of the 47 geometries in its list, or the computer cannot use the hard drive. I've currently got a 428 MB. genuine HDD and a CF card partitioned into four 2 GB. partitions.

What I have to do:

1. Open the case and examine motherboard switch 6 setting
2. Examine the video card switches
3. Make sure the motherboard and video card don't conflict.
4. Make sure the system BIOS agrees with both the motherboard and the video card

Results:

1. Internal switch 6 was/is set to "on" for color video, as expected and desired.
2. The 6 DIP switches on the video card were/are set to 111111, respectively. According to the video card manual, the switches are as follows.
   • 
   • There are also 3 jumpers on the video card. They were/are set to:
     • J1: pins 2-3: EGA or VGA (default) as expected and desired.
     • J2: pins 2-3: Automatic bus size detection
     • J3: On: IRQ9 enabled.
     • 
3. I need advice before I can tell if the video card conflicts with the motherboard. I don't think so, but I need to know whether slow or fast address decode matters. Does it? My processor is 386/25 MHz. with a coprocessor which brings it up to 29 MHz.
4. The system BIOS is as I described in a previous post.

So unless someone knows something I don't (and the amount I don't know is incredible!) I can't see that anything is conflicting.

Please advise.

 

[Plasma]

Your video card is set up correctly.

It's odd that the SIIG BIOS only works when you set your display to CGA80 in the setup. Not really sure what's going on there. You can disable the SIIG BIOS by removing the EPROM, but you will be limited to whatever drive geometry the system BIOS supports (without using a software overlay). Even if the C/H/S doesn't match your hard drive, as long as each one is <= your drive, you can use that setting. But you would need to reformat the drive.

If you have an EPROM burner, you can try replacing the SIIG BIOS with a Promise DriveMax BIOS or XTIDE Universal BIOS. It's also possible there is a later BIOS for your motherboard.