KACTUS BIOS in laptop

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

I have a Compac aramarda 7770DMT and what happened with the Bios is this, from normal operation on one day,on the next day on power up the bios failed to complete it's checks, so I switched it off and back on again and every time (the computer was powered up) the bios failed to complete it's checks, it checked less items as shown on the screen untill there was nothing being checked at all and finally on hitting the power switch nothing at all would happen, not even a twitch from the power supply. I'm sure if I could get another bios It would work again, unfortunately I don't have a spare to do a hot swap.
It looked like every time it was powered up the BIOS lost a bit more ground untill total failure to even start the power supply. The old beastie is scrap yard special if the bios can not be fixed as a new mother board is worth as much as a new computer.

Any Ideas please people ???? because I'm all out

Hey Max, unfortunatly.. as you probably already know, Compaq does not put the whole "setup" software in the BIOS EEPRom.

Most of the setup is located on the hard disk. But, your issue lies within the ROM and the initilzation of the system. Unfortunatly, the BIOS software updates that compaq releases usually are not updates for the core ROM offsets.

That usually stays the same. The only option you have is to, get a hold of another motherboard and copy the ROM contents or buy a new board. "Hot swapping" may work.. never tried that myself with socketed PLCC packages.

Joe