[tlug] NEC laptop BIOS

["Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon" <ronfaxon@example.com>]

I've been using the NEC LaVieC laptop I mentioned previously without any 
trouble, except for a weird sporadic problem that is becoming ever more 
common.  What happens is that when I hit the power button to start it 
up, it immediately locks onto trying to start from the floppy drive.  In 
the beginning, this was solved by just tossing a floppy - any floppy - 
into the floppy drive, after which it booted up normally.

Two things have changed lately however, one is that it is happening 
about half the time now, and the other is that the old toss a floppy 
into the floppy drive routine doesn't always work any longer.  What does 
seem to then work (but not all the time) is to open the CD-ROM drive 
door while the machine is vainly trying to boot up from the floppy drive 
(which goes on endlessly without timing out by the way - "GataGata, 
BeepBeepBeep, GataGataGata, BeepBeepBeep!), then forcing a shutdown (six 
second push of the power button).

I've tried to get into the BIOS settings, but although there's a (F2 I 
think) route to the BIOS, all the machine gives is a very miserly screen 
of mundane information about the computer with no settings in any shape 
or form.

I just spent some time poking around at various NEC sites and I haven't 
found any BIOS download pages.  Doesn't NEC update their BIOS's the way 
DELL does?

Any help appreciated.  At this rate, that laptop is headed for a 
sledgehammer demise.

Lyle