VisorCentral.com - Bios Access for Dell

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VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
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-- Bios Access for Dell (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=19968)

Posted by Toby on 12-04-2001 02:15 PM:

Re: My Word...its not just a show on NPR

quote:
Originally posted by Keefer Lucas
Nice link Toby. I sure as hell couldn't find it during my search through the Dell Knowledge base using search terms like "Bios" and "Bios Access". On all our Dimension machines (three altogether) the Dell logo boot screen takes up the full screen...no small text like on my Gateway.

I think I searched for 'enter system setup' or something along those lines.

quote:
While your being so helpful Toby can you tell me why the internal ATAPI Zip drive on my my Dell won't work? I plugged the idle IDE conector cable that runs from my motherboard to my CD-ROM into the internal Zip 100 I scavanged from an old machine. Now the system recognizes the Zip drive but not the CD-ROM. Any thoughts? A Bios setting or a jumper? Its definately a motherboard level issue; it wouldn't even recognize my CD-ROM when I booted with a system disk in the A: drive.

More than likely a jumper. One of the drives needs to be set up as master and the other as slave. I've only worked with a handful of IDE Zips, but I seem to remember they prefer to be master with the CD-ROM as slave.

Posted by IanP on 12-04-2001 11:07 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Toby
That was my whole point. I'm _positive_ that it's been documented in every Dell system I've ever purchased. Now, it's quite possible that Dell doesn't document it on consumer systems, but I can't see why they wouldn't. The best advice I can offer is that one should always RTFM.

at home I'm using a consumer system (at least that's what I think my Dimension XPS D300 is).

The Reference and Troubleshooting Guide that came with it has a whole section on the System Setup Program including screen shots. The first page of the section states:
in the index.

quote:
When prompted with the message Press <DEL> to enter SETUP, press <DEL> immediately.

At work I've set up heaps of Dell machines, all of which have a prompt which let us know which key (<DEL> or <F2> ) the system requires. The laptops are the only oddities, they require <Fn> + <F2> (I think

).
I'm intrigued by those machines that don't even show a prompt. Do the brand new Dell bios programs have an option to 'quick boot'?

Posted by Toby on 12-05-2001 03:13 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by IanP
at home I'm using a consumer system (at least that's what I think my Dimension XPS D300 is).

At the time of the D300, they were tending to differentiate far less than they seem to lately. I suspect the 98/ME/XP Home and 2000 Pro/XP Pro branching have had a lot to do with that.

quote:
At work I've set up heaps of Dell machines, all of which have a prompt which let us know which key (<DEL> or <F2> ) the system requires. The laptops are the only oddities, they require <Fn> + <F2> (I think ).

It's not only the laptops. The Precision workstations and PowerEdge servers are also <F2> over here.

quote:
I'm intrigued by those machines that don't even show a prompt. Do the brand new Dell bios programs have an option to 'quick boot'?

It's been an option for a while now. I suspect that it's enabled by default on 'consumer' oriented systems and not on 'business' systems because I don't recall seeing it on any that we've ordered here recently, but do recall seeing it on other Dells of friends or acquaintances.

Posted by MarkEagle on 12-05-2001 10:42 PM:

"Quick boot" is a function of the ACPI spec if I recall correctly. Any motherboard (ie most available today) that supports ACPI also supports quick boot.

Several of the name-brand PC's mask the BIOS boot details from the user, at least on consumer systems. I've seen it on Dell's, Gateway's, HP's, and Compaq's... instead, they give you their big, fancy (sometimes ugly) logo's to stare at.

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Posted by Pathdoc on 12-06-2001 03:16 AM:

After all of this discussion, I decided to go and play around with the BIOS of my 3 year-old Dell Dimension XPS T800 (The BIOS version is A11 for anyone interested). One of the choices in the BIOS setup is "Boot". The first option under this tab is "Boot diagnostic". This can be enabled or disabled with the latter being the default. If the boot diagnostic is enabled, instead of the large Dell logo filling the whole screen, you get a small one in the upper right corner with "hit delete to enter BIOS setup" in the lower left corner. In addition, you see the memory check as well as the BIOS recognizing the different drives on the computer. I guess that this means that if you really don't like the big Dell logo or really want to watch your computer check its memory, you can do so!

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