Not a mac... but will be?

[insaneboy]

Ended up with a pair of Lenovo thinkcenter (M57p) towers that were being discarded from a local store of a national pizza chain... and it does smell like pizza when they've been on for a while. |)

Also included two touchscreen monitors, that's kind of fun.

Thus far I screwed up the BIOS on one trying to get it unlocked, I own no windows PCs so no way to make a restore floppy so I guess that one is done The other complains it has no serial number, but works fine. it is now running OS 10.7 quite happily (they're core2duo 2.33GHz 3GB RAM)

The touch screen, not so much, Have not found mac drivers for it other than one company that wants $200 for a single user license. Not going to happen, I can get a brand new touchscreen with mac drivers for less than that. :disapprove: Oh well it was cool for the 100 clicks the demo version gave me.

 

[MacJunky]

Ended up with a pair of Lenovo thinkcenter (M57p) towers

I own no windows PCs so no way to make a restore floppy so I guess that one is done

Have not found mac drivers for it other than one company that wants $200 for a single user license.

I will suggest that you have the solution to your problems.

Run windows on at least one of them.

And why were you trying to flash the BIOS without a machine to write proper floppy disks?

 

[olePigeon]

Find out the manufacturer of the motherboard / BIOS, there may be a jump that you can set so you can boot from a floppy and restore it.

 

[genie_mac]

Most modern PC motherboards have a dual bios just in case one gets corrupted. Check mobo type and you should find info on the net. Also some mobos have a jumper to clear the CMOS (reset BIOS) if it has a password lock.

so I guess that one is done

It's definitely NOT done

 

[Gorgonops]

It's definitely NOT done

Doing no research at all other than seeing that it was made by Lenovo I'd be a *little* worried. Some model Thinkpads have notoriously hard to undo BIOS passwords that can't be bypassed without snipping/soldering/etc. I don't believe they go to such lengths with their desktops but I haven't exactly paid attention.

But if really all you need is a floppy it does seem like that should be a solvable problem.

 

[insaneboy]

The point was, it's done for * me*. I don't have anything windows, not going to buy a copy just to flash the bios of a free computer. The other one is working fine. I'll give away the other to someone that can flash it.

 

[coius]

On MS site you can get trial versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8. Google "Digital River Windows 7" and you will find the images. MS makes them available for trial ware with no keys. You can install Windows without a key for 30 days, and since it's a core2duo, it will run Windows 7 easily.

Since you have no key, after 30 days it will make you activate. Until then you can use it like any normal windows install.

 

[LCGuy]

Technically they're not "trialware" - they're provided so that current licensed users of Windows 7 or 8 can redownload the image, in the event that they lose it.

Also - Windows 8 doesn't give you a 30 day grace period - you have to enter a product key right then and there for setup to continue

 

[Cory5412]

There is a 90-day trial version of both Windows 7 and 8. Do not download that version because it can not be converted or activated as a full version, even if you do have a serial number or site-license.

Most modern PC motherboards have a dual bios just in case one gets corrupted.

I don't believe this became a thing until after Core2Duo, and if it was, I do not believe it's a thing on most OEM boards. Asus and Gigabyte list it as features of their boards, but Intel doesn't and it's not listed in things like any of the Dell OptiPlex technical guidebooks. (I don't know if Lenovo has these for the ThinkCentres, and the M57 series is kind of old anyway, they might no longer be available for download.)

So if you managed to fry the BIOS on an OEM system, my guess is that the only solution is to install a new motherboard.

Anyway, congratulations! generally the rule is that business desktops are nice machines, and good Core2 systems will probably last a while.

 

[cb88]

Since you have 2 identical systems... pull the bios from the other one... boot it into the bios pull it out stick the other one in and save it.

See here: http://www.tokenasians.com/articles/bioshotswap.html

And yeah... I know its crazy to do that make certain you are grounded to at least reduce the risk of frying stuff!

Also this can be done on Sun SparcStations... of the same model at least I had one get corrupted once. boot to prom pull out the chip and stick the bad one in run set-defaults then plug it back in the other machine good to go.

Of course if your BIOS flash/eeprom isn't socketed... nevermind. And yes I know... this is a terrible idea.. but he's going to throw the machine out anyway. Worst case he frys something on the previously good machine and has to put the good BIOS in the bad machine so he still has one good machine

 

[jruschme]

Most modern PC motherboards have a dual bios just in case one gets corrupted.

I don't believe this became a thing until after Core2Duo, and if it was, I do not believe it's a thing on most OEM boards. Asus and Gigabyte list it as features of their boards, but Intel doesn't and it's not listed in things like any of the Dell OptiPlex technical guidebooks. (I don't know if Lenovo has these for the ThinkCentres, and the M57 series is kind of old anyway, they might no longer be available for download.)

BIOS recovery goes back at least to the Pentium era. It tends to be a blind operation, a floppy is prepared containing a copy of the BIOS with a specific filename. A jumper is changed or a particular keypress is held at power on. The recovery mode reads the floppy and flashes from the BIOS file. Newer BIOSes can also read from CD or USB.

I hate to admit, but I had to do this a few months back with an Asus notebook. Interestingly, I was specifically told by Asus that it was not possible.

The trick is to see who writes the actual BIOS (Phoenix, etc.). Each tends to have specific BIOS recovery procedures but is probably the same, irregardless of OEM motherboard manufacturer.

 

[insaneboy]

I have a copy of the .exe used to make the BIOS floppy, plenty of blank floppies, even a USB floppy drive...

when I have some time I guess. If I figure out an inexpensive way to get the touch screen to work I'll use it in the garage to play music and check websites when repairing things (my car usually... or the snowblower, something is bound to break on that every year).

 

[Cory5412]

BIOS recovery goes back at least to the Pentium era.

"Recovery" or "two BIOS subsystems capable of failover" ?

My original understanding was that it was the latter, which is very new, as I understand. (Probably something that EFI makes possible.)

Since you have 2 identical systems... pull the bios from the other one... boot it into the bios pull it out stick the other one in and save it.

That way, if he messes something up, he has two broken computers. Yay!