Lost RT Bios A2100

[JLaw]

Earlier this year I was getting a lot of realtime errors so my boss went ahead and swapped out the battery and managed to save the settings, but the battery must have been bad because we got an error the other day and the machine would no longer run. The battery had been depleted to 1.26V. Can anyone tell me what I would need to get to reflash the bios on the board? Video card, keyboard, monitor connection, etc.. The RT part number is 3-424-2168A01.


On a side note I noticed that my ws board doesn't have a battery and has two different p/n on it 3-424-2130A01 is listed on the original sticker but a newer sticker next to it has 3-424-2123A. Anyone know why it's like that?

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[maver1ck]

Regarding the battery dropping its voltage this quickly, the batteries used in most of these boards are common a lot of personal electronic devices, so there are a lot of cheap batteries on the market. If you buy one of the cheap batteries, or even a name brand one that's been sitting around for years, you are gambling with how long it will last.

If you have to ask what is necessary to re-flash the BIOS, I'd recommend you send it out to have it done. It is a simple process, but I've seen too many people smoke components to recommend doing this yourself unless you have experience. To answer your question though, you need a PS, Video card, keyboard, monitor, floppy drive, and the software to flash the BIOS. What type of each of these components depends on the vintage of the board, but most of them require older components that aren't available at the local computer stores anymore.

If you are interested in sending your RT board to me to do this for you, send me a PM, and we can set something up. I've done it for a couple of others on here already.

Many of the newer WS boards did not have a battery, but since you didn't provide serial number/vintage of your machine, I can only guess that your WS board was repaired/replaced at some point and Siemens updated the part number in the process.

[JLaw]

I figured that it may have just been a bad battery. I know that I'll need the ps video card, floppy drive, keyboard and monitor, and I'm confident that I can do it my self I'm just wondering how I would hook them up and suck as I have only two pci slots and a weird port at the back that I've never seen. I'm going to take it down to a nearby shop that carries all kinds of legacy components and have some pretty knowledgeable guys but I was just looking for a heads up here. If after I visit the shop I decide that it's out of my realm I'll probably take you up on that offer. I have been building and working on computers since I was 9 but these parts were old even then, lol. Just Looking for any links to files and an idea of the types of parts I'll need. For example there no ps/2 mouse/keyboard ports on this thing so how would I interface them?

That's what I thought about the WS board but I thought I'd ask anyways in case the second was a p/n from another common board from a different machine and it had been swapped. Our machine is a 1996 A500 with A2100 controls. I don't have the machine serial number and I won't be back at work till Monday so any advice would be appreciated.

[maver1ck]

I didn't mean to discourage you from trying, just that I've helped customers through the process, and it takes less time to do it myself than go through all the back and forth messages. If you have the necessary hardware, I'm willing to try to help you.

The specific components you need will depend on what RTboard you have. If you have a local shop with guys that know legacy hardware, they should be able to set you up with what you need. The problem is most computer places don't have any people that even recognize some of the ports on these boards.

[ifixcnc]

I didn't mean to discourage you from trying, just that I've helped customers through the process, and it takes less time to do it myself than go through all the back and forth messages. If you have the necessary hardware, I'm willing to try to help you.

The specific components you need will depend on what RTboard you have. If you have a local shop with guys that know legacy hardware, they should be able to set you up with what you need. The problem is most computer places don't have any people that even recognize some of the ports on these boards.

Hello

I have an RT board that needs flashed, can you help?

Thanks!

[bigryno1]

I am currently going through a similar problem with bios/flash for the RT board. Does anyone have the flash/firmware for the RT board. For a A2100 with 3-424-2168a01 rt board.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ryan