Help with an old pc...Boot up problems...

[PhaZe]

Hmm, My friend has an old computer, its a 133mhz, 16meg ram, the works
ok, when it shows the bios(award modular bios v4.5.1), it shows the primary master, slave, etc...
OK it shows it detecting the HDD

then right after that, it says
Conflict I/O Ports: 2F8
Keyboard error or no keyboard present.

Then it says press f1 or del to enter setup...l0l..
Ok, when i do F1 to continue, it goes to C:\ prompt , but when I try to go to my floppy, A:\, I type A and it types H! =[, the keys are all messed. Ok so we rebooted and we try to enter the setup by pressing delete. OK well I cant save anything because when i change some options, I try to go back to the main menu to save the config but the ESC key doesnt work! =[...

Ok, So we thought. Must be the keyboard. So we try another working keyboarding and it gives the same error plus an additional message saying..
Keylock is on, unlock key, or something...
IM not sure....
can anyone help?
thanks in advance..

 

[HdwGuy]

Some old keyboards have an at\ xt switch. This is becouse the xt has the keyboard controler in the keyboard and at and beond have the controler on the motherboard. Check this switch if it has one! If it is in the wrong position change it.
Good Luck!

 

[PhaZe]

Ok thanks, I will tell him tomorrow

 

[Z_Amon]

It sounds like it might possibly be a configuration problem in the BIOS. I'd check the hardware in the machine, as it's possible that you have your serial ports conflicting with another hardware device. It's also possible that you do have some sort of keyboard problem, possibly some ISA device that's actually grabbing the IRQ, which is unlikely but perhaps possible.

Keylock error sounds like somebody turned on the lock on the machine. A lot of 486 level machines had a physical lock on the front of the case with a key that you could turn. I haven't seen a Pentium level machine with a lock recently, but that's worth a check too.

Best of luck to you!

Z.