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DGI 486 laptop, locked out!

I

ifkz

New Member
Joined
May 10, 2015
Messages
7
Location
Austin, TX
It is model number DGI-D-4D and it looks to have 12 MB of RAM and an AMD 486 DX2 CPU. I thought I would have better luck with this, it is an ebay purchase and one of the few out there that I found that still worked! At boot it looks like it needs a new BIOS coin cell battery (easy enough to find), but the main problem is a bios password. It boots to "Enter ROM password" and gives three tries before it locks.

I pulled it apart and found a jumper I could short next to the coin cell battery, but this did not clear the password. I saw some dip switches near the 486, but I think these are for clock speed.

I feel a bit dumb at this point and I even have an external PCMCIA CDROM in the mail to me (this only has a floppy).

Can anyone help? I can't even find a manual for this laptop online anywhere. All of this was an attempt to play Tie Fighter again in a space saving way (and a few other programs).
 
Welcome to these forums.

ifkz said:
I pulled it apart and found a jumper I could short next to the coin cell battery, but this did not clear the password.
Click to expand...
Did you try removing the battery, say, for half an hour (to be sure).

ifkz said:
Can anyone help?
Click to expand...
I can see a text on the Internet that indicates that the DGI-D-4D has an AMI made BIOS.
Try the backdoor passwords for AMI that are shown at [here]. Some may be case sensitive.
 
In between messages, I did that very thing and like you said, and I found one that did work! I now have full access to the bios! The next issue: the soldered in coin cell BIOS battery is flat and needs to be replaced. I thought about trying to find a replacement to solder in, but a better approach may be to clip it out and install a remote battery solution that uses a 2032 and a standard holder. I think I found a place inside of the case.

The bios recognizes my 20GB drive as an 8GB. I guess that's okay. The 512MB drive inside was toast, and this 20GB is the smallest I own.

Another set of questions: No laptop that I have found has an old joystick port, on a standard PC they are on the soundcard. I did find a mention of a PCMCIA card that adds a joystick port, but I can not find one anywhere online. I would want to use an old x-y axis two button stick, pretty basic.

Next, I have a chance to buy a slightly later model tested broken laptop. It is $30 and I would want it for the floppy drive as a backup. Should I do it? No hard drive or post behavior according to the advertisement.
 
ifkz said:
... has an old joystick port, on a standard PC they are on the soundcard.
Click to expand...
Not always. For example, the IBM PC had a dedicated card, pictured [here].

ifkz said:
Next, I have a chance to buy a slightly later model tested broken laptop. It is $30 and I would want it for the floppy drive as a backup. Should I do it? No hard drive or post behavior according to the advertisement.
Click to expand...
It is your money - your gamble. It could be that the battery just needs a decent charge, but conversely, what if there is a faulty chip on the motherboard.
 
Do you have any tips to get a joystick working in dos with this laptop?; is the PCMCIA card my best option for a joystick port? Do you have any tips to help track one down (search terms, or even a link?)?

I messaged the seller of the other laptop; I am wondering if a replacement floppy is worth the asking price alone, I do not think it is a standard part unlike desktop floppy drives.

Some good news today: my external CD-ROM drive arrived, which will make installation a lot easier once I get the BIOS battery fixed.
 
ifkz said:
Do you have any tips to get a joystick working in dos with this laptop?; is the PCMCIA card my best option for a joystick port?
Click to expand...
I have no experience with joystick ports via PCMCIA.
I did not even know that they ever existed, but that can be expected since I have never been one to play computer games.
Maybe someone else will comment.
 
There's the Phoenix Card Manager, a PCMCIA stack that is available for DOS (note: versions after 3.2 are Windows-only). I know it supports lots of stuff, even Flash cards (not trivial under DOS, as they need a special file system). No idea if a PCMCIA card with a joystick port would work as well, though. Never used or even saw one.
 
Great news! I spent some time with my Weller soldering station, some scrap wire, and a cr2032 and got the BIOS fixed so it saves the settings/date/time. With this I was able to finally boot properly and install DOS. Not to worry, the old battery was not a rechargeable.
There are some issues: the AMIBIOS is in need of an update and it can only use 512MB of this 20GB drive. FAT16 should at least let me use 2GB per partition. The PCMCIA CD-ROM that I bought also refuses to work in DOS. I spent hours tonight looking for a DOS PCMCIA program called cardsoft and had no luck. The DOS driver that came with my CD-ROM also failed.
My solution was to copy the contents of the Win95 CD to the hard drive (from a more modern PC) and run an install that way. I also learned that this laptop has a Soundblaster compatible in it and can run DOOM.
 
Thanks, that was one of the pictures I found for a PCMCIA joystick card. Nothing in auction searches though.
I had the bright idea to try a USB 2.0 card but old Win95 does not recognize it. I guess this is a 486 DX100, so I could upgrade to something newer, maybe even Windows XP to get a joystick working? It does have 12MB of ram.
I would like to use more of my drive, for some reason it only lets me use 504MB. If I remember FAT16 has a 2GB limit. The BIOS recognizes it as 8GB (out of 20GB). I can not find a BIOS update on American Megatrends' site. The code if anyone could help out:
41-1996-090401-00101111-060692-Ver1.05-wb
 
ifkz said:
I would like to use more of my drive, for some reason it only lets me use 504MB. If I remember FAT16 has a 2GB limit. The BIOS recognizes it as 8GB (out of 20GB).
Click to expand...
For this, look here: http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?47583-Beat-the-504Mb-hard-disk-limit

Install EZ-Drive and your problems are gone (well, that one at least ;) ).

USB on Win95/98 is a piece of crap. And XP will not allow most older games to run. Another way to get a gameport is by building a parallel port adapter. No idea how compatible these are, though.
 
ifkz said:
I had the bright idea to try a USB 2.0 card but old Win95 does not recognize it. I guess this is a 486 DX100, so I could upgrade to something newer, maybe even Windows XP to get a joystick working? It does have 12MB of ram.
Click to expand...

I think some versions of Win95 did support USB. See following link:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/253756

But I've never seen a PCMCIA USB card that came with drivers for Win95.

As to the hard drive, I would suggest just using it with the 504mb for either dos, win31, win 95 or combination. That's plenty of space for the programs that ran with those operating systems. If you are determined to use the remaining hard drive space, then suggest running Linux.

I have a HP Omnibook 430 that has a 5 gb micro drive in it. DOS/Win31 is on the first 500 mb, and then Slackware Linux 7.2 is on the remaining 4.5 GB. This is on a 486 machine with 8 gb ram. The Linux is used in command line, but has the entire Linux packages loaded.

Bill
Smithville, NJ
 
This install of Win95 was one of the OEM versions that had USB support, I found it in one of the many broken computers I was given over the years. From the looks of things, I think this laptop is as upgraded as I can possibly get without running into issues down the road. Better to leave it and use it! One time I ran one of these disk overlay programs, tried to undo it and I destroyed the drive; even with a low level format I could not get it FAT16/32/NTFS compatible again. As Bill/natcha says...504mb is good enough.

Thanks for all of the help getting it going again folks! Now to make a new thread about getting a PCMCIA CD-ROM working in DOS!!!
 
Which password worked?

Which password worked?

ifkz said:
In between messages, I did that very thing and like you said, and I found one that did work! I now have full access to the bios!
Click to expand...

I have what I believe to be the exact same computer and I replaced the cmos battery because it was dead. Now the bios is asking for a password. It never did before. What password worked ?

Thanks.
 
ifkz said:
Thanks, that was one of the pictures I found for a PCMCIA joystick card. Nothing in auction searches though.
I had the bright idea to try a USB 2.0 card but old Win95 does not recognize it. I guess this is a 486 DX100, so I could upgrade to something newer, maybe even Windows XP to get a joystick working? It does have 12MB of ram.
I would like to use more of my drive, for some reason it only lets me use 504MB. If I remember FAT16 has a 2GB limit. The BIOS recognizes it as 8GB (out of 20GB). I can not find a BIOS update on American Megatrends' site. The code if anyone could help out:
41-1996-090401-00101111-060692-Ver1.05-wb
Click to expand...

Back in the 90's I had an external Altec Lansing PCMCIA CD-ROM with built in Sound Card with game port (and FANTASTIC speakers), would kill 3 devices with one card ;-)

As for using all the drive, check out either Ontrack Disk Manager, or EZ-Drive, you will NEVER find a BIOS update for a machine that old, I highly doubt there ever was one to address lard disks.
 
k2x4b524[ said:
Your best bet is either to use a DDO or, find an EIDE Bios board, which will do the same thing, but will take up a slot. It won't however, force you to install a DDO Driver to use the whole drive.
Click to expand...

It's a laptop, no slot for an EIDE card, DDO is only option, and like I said in previous post Ontrack or EZ-Drive are best options for it.
 
Hello all! I also have one of these laptops, only it says: "keyboard is locked.... Unlock it" and doesn't let me boot. I don't know what's the key combination for unlocking keyboard so I can press F1 to resume into CMOS settings. Cannot find any user manual of this old laptop anymore. Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks for any input.
 
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