[SOLVED] boot problem and dead keyboard after empty CMOS battery

[Ruldrinod]

I'm having trouble with a mainboard that's labelled "Motorola VP22 Rev. A4" that's part of an Agilent Oscilloscope. The device was not used for years and when I turned it on it started to boot and showed that the CMOS battery was empty. Pressing F1 as sugested to continue didn't have any effect.

Then I changed the battery (yes, the new one is OK and dated till 2028) and even tried to reset CMOS using a jumper on the mainboard. But it still shows that the CMOS checksum is wrong and waits for a key. Pressing any of the sugested Keys (F1, TAB, DEL, F12) on several different PS/2 and USB Keyboards does not show any reaction. Power to the PS/2 Keyboard seems to be OK (5,1V). Pressing any of the Lock keys (Capslock, ...) does not light the corresponding LED.

The Bios is from Award version v6.00PG dated from 2001. I can't enter the setup but I suspect that a USB keyboard either is not supported for BIOS setup or it is disabled.

Does someone have any idea how I might succeed to boot past the CMOS error message? Perhaps inserting a PCI PS/2 card (which we currently do not own) but I doubt that the BIOS will recognise the additional PS/2 port. My last resort would be to replace the W83627HF-AW super I/O chip which should contain the 8042 keyboard controller. The sample schematic for this controller does not show any other active components from the chip to the PS/2 keyboard connector.

But I'm still hoping there might be a trick I didn't think of.

 

[InvalidError]

Checksum error after CMOS clear is normal, it lets you know that CMOS is being ignored because of the error and default settings have been used until you can get into BIOS and save new settings to fix it.

Where the keyboard detection issue is concerned, make sure the PS/2 keyboard is plugged in before turning power on, some PS/2 ports don't get initialized unless the keyboard is plugged in at power-up. Aside from that, the only other thing I can think of is perhaps a bad solder joint on the PS/2 port is making the board fail to detect the keyboards you tried properly.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

As those are somewhat proprietary as far as the BIOS you're going to have to obtain the service manual for your specific scope. You'll get nowhere using off the shelf cards as those systems are preprogrammed to only recognize specific hardware. Those boards are known to have some problems with cracked solder joints in various places. You'll need some skill in surface mount soldering to fix that.