Question -- How to track a piece of hardware?

[NurseRN]

Someone asked me to fix a computer (an old p166), home-made and without any documentation regarding the hardware used. Everything works except that I need to get into BIOS and instruct the computer to look for the IDE devices attached. The trouble is that the damn thing is password protected and I have no idea which jumpper to fiddle with.

The only things I see on the motherboard are:

1 -- Made in Taiwan ;-) ver 1.0 CE 5V-2
2 -- VIA VT82C585VPX
3 -- VIA 82C586A
3 -- AWARD 1995 (i know... 🙂 PCI/PnP S/N 084454793

I flipped and tunred the board all the way and there is nothing more I can find.

Any thoughts (bisides throwing the whole thing out of window or into the garbage)??

Thanks a lot@

N

 

[bendixG15]

As a last resort, I would pull the BIOS battery and then boot up in default mode.
That "should" take out the password.
Good Luck >>>>>>

 

[NurseRN]

Found the company: Luckystar Corp. I used www.motherboards.org; great site!

Thanks for the tip! If I don't find the blueprint of the board I might just try that. Thanks again!

N

 

[HalfCrazy]

I got this list of backdoor passwords that might be in place for some BIOS versions. Below is list for the AWARD bios. They might work or might not but it's worth the try if pulling the battery don't work.

AWARD_SW
AWARD_PW
J262
HLT
SER
SKY_FOX
BIOSTAR
ALFAROME
Lkwpeter
j256
AWARD?SW
syxz
ALLy
589589
589721
awkward
CONCAT
CONDO
j64
szyx

 

[RemyCanad]

I have the program you need its called CMOS Killer. When you boot from a floppy with it on there and run the program it will clear it! But hmm I don't have it here with me right now. If you want me to send you a copy PM me and I will get a copy when I go to work on Monday.