BIOS Updates forum

I'm trying to fix a friend's PC. It's an NEC Ready 9716. I've googled this to death and come up dry so any info would be appreciated.

Said friend was trying to reload his OS from the recovery disk and the PC crashed. When rebooted, it just requests "bootable media". I can load a floppy disk to boot DOS, but no CDROM or hard drive. The CMOS settings show the IDE interfaces both disabled. The BIOS options for IDE interfaces are all set to automatic. I cannot re-enable the IDE interfaces.

NEC doesn't provide any legacy hardware info or updates. All I can find out about this BIOS and motherboard are here:

Program: eSupport.com BIOS Detect v1.2 July 21, 2003
BIOS Date: 02/03/97
BIOS Type: American Megatrends licensed to Intel
BIOS ID: BIOS Version 1.00.01.DK0Z
Flash: Intel DK0Z motherboard
Chipset: Intel Triton 430HX rev 3
Superio: NSC 306 rev 3 found at port 2Eh
CPU Type: Pentium
CPU Speed: 512 Mhz
CPU Max: 512 Mhz
BIOS ROM In Socket: No
BIOS ROM Size: 256K
Memory Installed: 64 MB
Memory Maximum: 192 MB

Interesting. According to information elsewhere, the Ready 9716 should contain a BCM FM567 board with Phoenix bios and the i430VX chipset. So unless you have opened the case and verified this board has indeed an i430HX chipset I think someone flashed the wrong bios on the board.

Interesting indeed. I've discovered a few other inconsistencies. Most motherboard pictures I see for that PC show 4 ram slots. This one has 6. Maybe its motherboard was replaced... Nah, couldn't be. It's got an ISA/PCI riser board that is pretty proprietary looking.

The motherboard is littered with numbers, none of which look like any model numbers that I could identify.

I couldn't clear the CMOS with jumpers because I couldn't find any, or any info about which they might be. I couldn't reach the battery without performing major surgery, to clear it that way either.

Ah well. I gave up. It got the best of me. I've been defeated. My friend got his boat anchor back. Let the barnacles begin.

NEC oughta be ashamed at their poor legacy documentation.

Question: Would the machine even run with such a mismatched bios? I never would have thought so. Can't be.

Can you take a photo of the machine opened?

Sorry, I gave it back. Wasn't worth the effort.