Dell BIOS ( was Low Level Format of 1.4 Mb Floppy Isn't Happening)

["Martin McCormick" <martin.m@suddenlink.net>]

Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> writes:
> Does the machine you are booting use GRUB as the boot manager?

Surprisingly enough, yes. I wasn't sure but it certainly does.

	Here's an explanation with a hope for a workable
solution.

	I don't know how common this is but the BIOS' of two Dell
Optiplexes plus the BIOS of another Dell Dimension don't stay set
the way one would like them to. As a computer user who happens to
be blind, the setup process is a royal pain in the backside
because since there is no OS booted, the only output device is
the VGA output. I have to hook it up to a monitor and have
someone like my kind and patient wife or, before I retired, a
coworker change the boot sequence order from floppy-C:-CDROM to
CDROM-floppy-C: or CDROM-C:-floppy which prevents the hard drive
from grabbing the boot sequence each time.

	Of course you can make the hard drive unbootable and
maybe force it to CDROM but one should not kick Murphy in the
knee cap when things are already going South. In this particular
case, I want to try a ubuntu installation CD to see if the
"speakup" software synthesis system works on this box and if so,
I will install it. If not, the obsolete installation already on
the hard drive does work but it sure needs to be replaced if
possible.

	What happens is that we set a desired boot order and save
the settings. Things go fine for several months and then I try to
boot from CDROM one day and it's all back wrong again.

	A good solution would be what I call the yank-back. If
one could backup the settings when good and the box decides to
clobber them, force them back.

	The true ideal solution is for it not to happen at all
but you fight the war with the weapons you have, not what you
wish they were.

	I don't think the CMOS batteries are dead because the
clock still seems to keep time so I am guessing that something
happens that the BIOS code sees as an error maybe during bootup
so it decides to re-order the sequence. One doesn't discover this
until the next time the CDROM doesn't spin up when a bootable
disk is in it. By the way, the CDROM works fine when mounting a
CD or ripping one.

Martin WB5AGZ