mobo BIOS problem

[dademurphy]

I've an old socket 3 mobo with phoenix BIOS and when I try to get into the BIOS it is pwd protected. So I pulled the "PWD CLR" jumper on the board and it still didn't let me in. I then proceded to pull out the bios chip, wait 8 hours and replace chip and try again. no luck. So I pulled the chip again and left it out for two days. Still can't get into BIOS. I looked up the defalt pwds and tryed every one I could find, about 30 or so. still no go. I've not yet tryed a brute force attack on it and if you cant help that would be my last chance.

[Mntsnow]

You might try a program called "cmos password"

http://lists.gpick.com/pages/CMOS_Information.htm

[dademurphy]

Small problem... The mobo has no IDE on it and thus I cant get it to run any OS. The only IDE controler card I have dose not work. So... any other ideas.
Perhaps I'm asking the wrong question. Why would any one manufacture a mobo without any IDE and do I need a standerd IDE controler card or some thing else?

[smokin]

Most motherboards were like that once.... with a seperate IDE controller card. A card from a used parts dealer should do you well..they were pretty much standard. What happened to the one from that computer? Anyway..they are about 3 bucks from a place like Computer Rennaissance oor whatever they call it where you are
:)

[dademurphy]

Cool thare is a Computer Renesance just up the road from me.
Thanks for all your help. You guys rock!

[dademurphy]

Just out of curiosity, why did they make mobos with out IDE. I find no logic to that.

[Mntsnow]

well back in the old days HD's were very expensive. (one of my first HD's was 100meg in size and cost like 400 bucks!) back to what I was saying is back in the 286 and even early 386 times most things ran from floppy (5.25 and some of the newer ones had the 3.5 floppy drives)

[dademurphy]

Hey, that makes sense!
Thanks Mntsnow!

[Gene C]

mike is right. when I first started. they didn't even have floppies. some of my first just used the system memory to run programs and than I moved up to a newer one that used a tape drive for everything.

my first hdd was a 10 megs and weighed in at a little over 3/4 pounds. and had it partation into two drives. I was king of storage.
also, the reason for the cards was the fact that some drives wouldn't work with other manf. systems ect in the old days. back than you had to manualy setup your system. and I mean everything!!

that was before windows even was around. he he

[dademurphy]

Hey it works. I don't know what happend. Set up the board to run a brute force attack on the BIOS and before I began I thought I would try some more defalt PWDs and the BIOS didn't even prompt for a PWD. It just let me in.

Thanks again for all you're help and knowlage.

still one problem though....

[dademurphy]

As stated before the board has no IDE so I got an PCI IDE contorler card and when I boot up it gives me a "faliure fixed disk 0" error code. The PCI IDE controler card has two jumpers side by side, looks like( :: ). Tryed all posible jumper configurations and still no go. Looked through the BIOS to check if i needed to turn something off or on and found nothing that look of relevence to me.

[dademurphy]

Maybe this thred shuld be moved to data storage devices?