Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!usenet.ufl.edu!tulane!theozone!chris.crayton
From: chris.crayton@ozonehole.com (Chris Crayton) 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Gateway 2000 & booting fr
Message-ID: <10007.24.uupcb@ozonehole.com>
Date: 21 Apr 93 17:25:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Ozone Online Operations, Inc. - New Orleans, LA
Reply-To: chris.crayton@ozonehole.com (Chris Crayton) 
Lines: 28

*** On 04-20-93  21:56, Tim King had the unmitigated gall to say this:

 TK> accidentally discovered that if a have a floppy from ONE particular
 TK> box of diskettets in the A drive when I boot up, rather than getting
 TK> the "Non-system diskette" message, the machine hangs and the CMOS
 TK> gets overwritten (luckily, Gateway sends a print of the standard

Just a wild thought here, but how about this: there is a small boot program
on every formatted diskette, whether or not it contains system files.  It is
this small program that prints the "Non-System Disk" error, not DOS.  If
this program tries to transfer control to a BIOS location that is
nonstandard on the Gateway, then it could clear the BIOS.

I don't think that the BIOS is overwritten, there is usually a small routine
to clear the CMOS area, in case an invalid configuration prevents the
machine from booting.  I think that the boot code on the Fuji disks may
inadvertantly call this routine.

Just a thought.

... Don't hit me, Mr. Moderator... I'll go back on topic... I swear!
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