(no subject)

[dolari]

Five things happened last night to just let me know that if there is a Higher Power, it's a reallly sadistic sumbitch. Of the five, three of them happened to people close to me, and of those three, one was on the level of "I'm going to live pretty badly for a bit" and two were on the level of "Looks like my life expectectancy just got a lot shorter." If those people wish to tell their stories, they will.

It was also the beginning of the month - backup time. I shoulda known better, though. I have a Western Digital "My Book." 500GB for backups, of which, I use about 150GB each backup. The new laptop has no problem with that system. After I SYSed it with DOS 7, the MyBook is totally bootable with a copy of Ghost 8.3 on it. It's easy to do.

The older machine, though, HATES it. Runs great in Windows, but it refuses to boot to it, and getting the old PC to boot to DOS with a bum floppy disk (and the laptop has no floppy disk) is a real pain. I end up having to boot to a boot CD with goofy drivers that make the system see the drive twice which makes Ghost crap out unless I type a really long long long command line.

I found out, though, that the reason was the BIOS was buggy. It said it could boot to USB drives, but the code wasn't that good and an upgrade (from 2003!) was available. I hate updating a computer's BIOS. If you don't do it exactly exactly right, you can turn your nice computer into a brick. And getting that BIOS installed when you don't have a floppy to boot to DOS is a pain.

Eventually, I got into a DOS prompt, and ran the BIOS upgrade and crossed my fingers. "BIOS NOT INSTALLED! BIOS LOCK ON." I'd forgotten that my system had a BIOS lock, to keep viruses from rewriting it. It just needed to be turned off and run again. And when I turned on the machine...it became a brick. Powers on, no video, two low beeps, nothing else. The lock allowed the program to erase the old BIOS, but not put on the new one.

So now I need a new PC. Well, not necessarily new. It's just a fileserver. Don't need a supermachine for a fileserver. I just don't have any PCs anymore. No leftover motherboards or powersupplies. So a low-end PC is in order (I've had the same case and powersupply since 2002, it's getting ratty)...but I won't grab one of those until I move to Seattle.

First order of business, though, is to get a USB/IDE adapter to copy the hard drive contents over to the laptop, and to use the WinBook as an actual drive, instead of just a backup drive (then use the IDE drives as backup drives till I move to Seattle).

With all the news and events, I couldn't sleep. I just tossed and turned until my alarm went off, and here I am. erinlefey, I should still be at the movies. I'm going to try and get some sleep once I'm off work. So I should be okay (and maybe in better spirits...maybe) at the movie. If I'm not there, it's because I'm sleeping through three very loud alarms and am exhausted from having four hours of sleep in 36 hours. But I'm gonna try! I have to, I paid for the ticket already. :)

Anyways. Terrible night. Faith shaking night. The worst in some time.

Comments

[drkbish.livejournal.com]

If you're considering me to be one of "the three", you are hereby commanded to KNOCK IT OFF.

I'm fine. I will be fine. If I'm anything like the rest of my family I'll live to be a ripe old age. They just don't know what my heart is up to, is all.

(My "story", as it were, is on my site/LJ anyway, so it's no great secret.)

Anyway, don't worry. I just allow myself moments of panic so that the rest of the time, I can just not worry about it and go about my day (and even have fun about it at my own expense). :-)

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you were one of them - but let me say, you're a only a bit of my worries right now. A friend of mine though...I don't want to say what's going on over there, but if its true, it's 100% fatal. I'll let you know when I see you on IM.

[kisai.livejournal.com]

Which "two beeps"?
http://www.pchell.com/hardware/beepcodes.shtml

If it's the two short beeps, it might still be alive. After most bios flashes you have to reset the cmos and dmi crud.

Bricked only means no beeps, or one long beep of death. What kind of machine is the old machine? Did you unplug the USB stuff after you flashed?

Hmm what else... Really depending on the age, if it has a removable flash chip you can do a hot swap flash (done that, don't recommend it), or just simply get a new motherboard cpu memory combo off eBay.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

Long low beep, shorter lower beep. Not like the standard beepcodes, which are chirps (when I put in bad memory, I'd get memory beep codes but they sounded like chirps. This sounds more like a deep low buzzing. Kinda death-knell sounding. No text afterwards and my PS/2 and USB keybaords don't respond to CAPS LOCK.

It's a pretty old system, 2002 and if it's dead, I can do without it for now, and pick up a slightly newer system come the move to Seattle. I'll give it a try later tonight, though, and see if I can reset the BIOS with jumpers. I don't have much faith though. I've killed more than my share of systems updating the BIOS. :P

[toastyman.livejournal.com]

Most motherboards have a "recovery mode" where you can fix a messed up bios flashing. The procedure to do it is usually overly complex (create a floppy using certain exact instructions, and do some voodoo while booting the computer up), but it's pretty universal.

Do you know the manufacturer/model of the motherboard? I'll see what I can dig up.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

Its an old FIC VC15 motherboard. According to BIOS manual it should be attempting to access the A: drive for a backup, but my A: drive is currently borked.

I'd already ordered a USB floppy for my laptop. When it shows up, I'll try it from there...but the whole reason for the BIOS upgrade was to boot to USB.

Maybe I should pick up a floppy while I'm in Austin.

[toastyman.livejournal.com]

It's pretty unlikely that a USB floppy will work for this. When the main BIOS gets lost, this itty bitty tiny BIOS takes over that barely knows how to turn the power light on - bringing up the whole USB system and finding a USB floppy and figuring out how to use it is beyond what most recovery BIOSes can do.

It can't hurt at all to try it, but I think you'll need a real old style floppy drive.

Two quick things to try:

Did you have to move a jumper to turn the lock off? If so, have you tried putting it back?

Try holding down the END key on your keyboard (a PS/2 not USB keyboard, if you've got one) while turning the computer on.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

The BIOS lock was a BIOS function itself. You had to get into the BIOS to turn the lock on or off, and it was always on (if you turn it off, the BIOS freezes saying BIOS LOCK OFF! PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE). But no jumper this time.

The END key actually dfid work back when I was having Processor problems, but this time, it's not - I'm still just getting the two low tones as soon as it starts with no text. I'm beginning to think it may be down for the count....

[red-pill.livejournal.com]

*hugs jen

i hope things get beter.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

how long before you move on?

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

Computer wise? Not till after I move to Seattle.