Fwd: [ILUG] [OT] - but you are my only hope

[Sonic Dread]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sonic Dread <sonic at dreadserver.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 12:14 PM
Subject: Re: [ILUG] [OT] - but you are my only hope
To: Info at kennedysoftware.ie


Hi,

Thanks for the responses.
@Paulo: the vendor suggested the idea that it may have reverted to the LVDS
display. They want us to send it back to them again but we can't afford the
time.

@Mike: There is an onboard supercap which can be enabled in place of a
backup battery. We don't have an onboard battery but also have the jumper
settings for the supercap open (disabling it) so the time isn't even saved.
I tried connecting it with the power off for a few seconds in the hopes it
would do s hard reset of the BIOS but no change. I haven't tried powering it
on with the supercap jumpers connected for fear of doing some damage. We
have a breakout board for connecting the keyboard and mouse and this has a
small battery on it. I'm not sure whether this is counts as a backup battery
and so am worried about connecting the supercap with this connected. The
vendor is also unclear and seem to have avoided the question multiple times
but simply saying the supercap should be disabled if there is an external
battery..... not specifying if the small battery on the keyboard/mouse
breakout counts.

They didn't even confirm that the supercap connected/disconnected would
affect the bios. However, it is open at the moment so if it does then the
BIOS should be cleared every time we power off.... unless I have it wrong
:-?


On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Michael Kennedy
<Info at kennedysoftware.ie>wrote:

> Unlikely... but...
>
>  1. If the BIOS settings are held in RAM that needs to be powered, then
> there's probably a "coin" battery on the motherboard to hold it up... If you
> remove that battery for a few minutes, or toggle some switches/jumpers to
> disable it for a short while, it might reset your BIOS.
>
>  2. Some boards have a hardware switch/jumper to reset the BIOS... You
> might check for any such animal...
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> On 18/11/2010 10:45, Sonic Dread wrote:
>
>> I have been working on a college project which is to fly on a sounding
>> rocket as part of the European Space Agency's REXUS program. The main
>> controller hardware consists of a PC/104 stack. We were initially using
>> Linux as the OS but had problems with some of the hardware. I would have
>> to
>> write a driver for a frame grabber which is outside my comfort zone and we
>> are very limited with time. There were some other problems with the DAQ
>> hardware so eventually we had to send it back to the supplier and the
>> diagnosis was a 'faulty catalyst module'. To save time we had to get XP
>> Embedded installed while they had it as the frame grabber drivers were
>> functional for Windows. It worked as normal for a few days but now we have
>> a
>> weird problem.
>> Usually on boot we would get the usual option to hit F2 for BIOS access
>> and
>> F12 for boot options. However, now we get no visual feedback until it logs
>> directly into Windows (flashing up the 'Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to login' for
>> barely a second before it automatically logs in). We don't even see the XP
>> 'blue slug' loading bar before it gets to this. If I do press F2/F12 on
>> boot
>> it just hangs on a blank screen.
>> There are two graphics interfaces on the board, a VGA and a single-channel
>> LVDS 24-bit interface. The theory is that the bios has somehow reverted to
>> using the LVDS as its primary display, only switching to VGA when Windows
>> has loaded.
>> Pressing F3 on boot should reset the BIOS to defaults and restart the
>> machine but we just get the same result. We absolutely need to access the
>> BIOS and the only solution from the supplier is to send it back to them
>> again which would be a disaster as we don't have another week to spare and
>> have to hand it over to ESA in two weeks.
>> I was wondering if anyone has access to an LVDS display that we could use
>> for couple of minutes to test if this is the problem? If it is we could
>> just
>> access the BIOS and set the primary display back to the VGA interface. It
>> would be a great help and we would very much appreciate any help or
>> suggestions you may have.
>>
>>  --
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-- 
Cheers,

Sonic



-- 
Cheers,

Sonic