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hypercubeFlag for United States of America

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"EISA Confugration nvram bad - run configuration utility" What to do next?

I'm working on an old ALR Revolution MP II Dual Processor Server with what appears to be an Intel Triton PCI/EISA mainboard.
It hasn't been run in a long time.
It appeared that the rechargeable battery was dead so I've replaced it.
Originally there was a message saying the battery was dead but no longer.

But, I'm still getting:
EISA Confugration nvram bad - run configuration utility

There's a screen shot attached from the 2nd screen.
The last one says:
Checking IRQ for Secondary IDE ....... IRQ 15
Setting up HDD on 1st IDE port .......     and there it just hangs......

I have the configuration utility I believe.  It's an .exe file.  But the system won't boot to anything including a DOS boot floppy so I'm not sure what to do next to run the config utility.  My assumption is:
Boot to DOS
Run the .exe

Does that sound right?
What else am I missing here?
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Rojosho
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Hello fmarshall,

I have seen this sort of error before on the old HP 486 systems and it generally points to corruption in the NVRAM scratch pad or free register area.  I am not too familiar with the System Board in question, so this information may not bare any results.

  1. Remove any controller that is configurable (i.e. your SCSI controller).  The goal here is to reduce your system to a 'bare minimum' so that you can find a 'base line' (A working hardware configuration) to work from.
  2. Reduce the memory to one memory stick.
  3. See if there are any 'DIP Switches' on the System Board that will allow you to 'clear NVRAM'.
  4. I  checked and ALR does not seem to have an active 'support' website, so you maybe out of luck in that area, BUT I did find the following which could help:
   http://www.wimsbios.com/biosupdates.jsp

Your goal here is to get to a configuration which will allow you to boot from a Floppy.  Once that is achieved, then there are offline and online diagnostics which will help isolate the problem.

Keep us posted.

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I already cleared the NVRAM and redid the settings after replacing the battery.
But, apparently this isn't the same thing as the "EISA NVRAM" or there's another section in the NVRAM that needs to be configured.
In my reading, every time one would change the configuration of the cards, then it was necessary to run the configuration program again.

I'll try taking out most of the cards and see....
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maques

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The screenshot was 2 of 3 that come up during bootup - sorry if that's confusing.  
I mentioned the wording from the short, last screen above.  

But I'll surely take the suggestions.  I don't need the SCSI at all.

CD booting isn't supported but I think it's likely that the floppy will work - we'll see.  If not, I have plenty of them around.  Thanks for the heads up on that.

The system did work the last time I turned it on so I know that configuration things should be fine - unless they have been lost somehow.
Haven't finished this yet...