ibm thinkpad 600e problem/question

[slag]

all documentation i have says you should be able to enter the bios by holding down the F1 key upon power up or reboot.

this does nothing for me and neither does repeatedly pressing the F1 key. If i hold down the funct, and f1 key, i get a picture on the screen of a disk entering the floppy drive and it says press f1 but i dont have a floppy drive. I just want to change the boot sequence to cdrom first.

how else can i get into the bios to do this?

thanks

 

[Soybomb]

if its any consolation i hold down the f1 after the memory count on my 600e and I get into the bios......

 

[slag]

no consolation at all. Mine comes up with the memory on screen and then hangs.. if i reboot while holding funct +f1 key, then i get the floppy drive image. The hdd tries to access and the cdrom spins up, but thats it.

Otherwise, nothing.

Is there a way to reset the cmos/bios on this thing?

Any other ideas?

 

[Soybomb]

Hmmm I don't know right off hand how to reset the cmos. If you want to flip through it though I'll email you the service manual (about a meg). I think its pretty must just diagnostics and part replacements but maybe you'll find something that will help in it..

 

[BA]

I don't know about a 600e, but on my 770's, there's a CMOS battery a reset right next to the ram slot.

You could also try creating an error so that it'd send you to BIOS.

Oh, and didn't you snag that one on larryville?

 

[slag]

yes, i snagged it on larryville.

The lady was getting an error which showed a bad trackpoint. The connector had become unsoldered to the cable and I resoldered it and now the error does not come up. The battery is dead so I bought a slim battery pretty cheaply brand new. The hard disk cycles like it is bad so I had another known good one I put in its place.

If i hold the F1 button down, nothing occurs upon bootup except the memory is shown and the thinkpad icon appears on the screen. Then nothing. If i hold the funct +f1 button on bootup, the floppy disk image appears and tells me to push F1. and then i get an error on the screen that corresponds to no known boot device available. I tried a bootable cdrom, but do not have the floppy drive for this laptop. Its a pentium 2 400 with 128 mb of ram so its worth something to try to get it working, but its starting to frustrate me.

If I could just get into the bios, i think i could get things squared away..

I already downloaded the diagnostic paper on it but its no help.

 

[BA]

I've got an external floppy that works with the 240 and 770, I'm guessing 600 would work too. You're more than welcome to borrow it.

Also, some of the Travelstars make weird noises even when they're operating normally. I'd check it out with DFT to be sure(and if it passes, sell it to me cheap)

 

[slag]

I pm'd ya. Thanks for the help!!

 

[slag]

sounds totally like my cmos battery is dead from what i read on a thinkpad newsgroup.

its a CR2025 panasonic battery and i will resolder the leads to it once i replace it. I am crossing my fingas..

 

[slag]

yep.. ended up being a slightly low cmos battery that couldnt carry a load.

Replaced it and now i can get into the cmos..

Thanks all, especially BA.

Joe