Question OS not on any harddrive but system still boots to standard OS.

Apr 14, 2020
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This is a but of a long shot and I'm not sure how to better word the title, so here we go.

I recently got an old(ish)TV box that I'm trying to convert into a server or whatever.

I've wiped the HDD that was inside the box by connecting it to my PC and there is nothing on the drive.

When I try to boot the box even without the HDD connected it still boots into the box's OS. I assume it's booting from another part of the box but I'm not sure where from? Can you load a boot manager onto the CPU? Ive searched for the board but it's just a Chinese mass produced board so there's no chance of a manual. Wave di1dn370tm, if anyone is interested. There is no way to get into bios to force to boot from USB or any other drive. If it is booting from the CPU, could I just plug the CPU into a bios enabled machine and do something with that? Granted I have no clue what socket the CPU needs but just want some help to be able to install my own software.

Once the box is turned on it will boot into recovery mode where I have the option to recover from USB but it never goes to the usb, it only tries to download firmware from the internet.

I already know that the server will run poorly because if the specs, but it's quarantine and I really can't be bothered ordering something in to do the job so I thought it would be a good project.

Any help would be appreciated as I'm stumped. I assumed the boot and OS was on the drive but apparently not