PWS 286 Texas Instruments Professional Workstation - Keyboard not working?

[lordhailsham]

Greetings folks, first off pls accept my apologies for not posting in the Texas Instruments section. My "portable" TI claims to be a 286, so I hope this is the correct place

Visually very nice condition machine. Not even a spec of dust inside! I replaced the CMOS BR2330 as I assumed it was very much past its sell-by date.

Machine powers up, fan running, hard disk whirring and does POST an then asks for F1. The original keyboard does not respond to F1 or anything. I swapped out the keyboard with PS/2 adapter and known good PS/2 keyboard. Sadly no luck (F1, etc didnt work)

There's not a ton of info about this machine out there that I can find so any tips or suggestions for what I do next appreciated!
cheers... Andy

286 Modular BIOS Version N3.03
Copyright(c)1984-88 Award Software Inc.
PWS - 286 Professional Workstation

TESTING INTERRUPT CONTROLLER #1 ...OK
TESTING INTERRUPT CONTROLLER #2 ...OK
TESTING CMOS BATTERY ...FAILED
TESTING CMOS CHECKSUM ...FAILED
TESTING EXTENDED CMOS CHECKSUM ...FAILED
SIZING SYSTEM MEMORY ...640K FOUND
TESTING SYSTEM MEMORY ...640 OK
CHECKING UNEXPECTED INTERRUPTS AND STUCK NMI ...OK
TESTING PROTECTED MODE ...OK
SIZING EXPANSION MEMORY BOARD ...00384K FOUND
TESTING MEMORY IN PROTECTED MODE ...01024 OK
TESTING PROCESSOR EXCEPTION INTERRUPTS ...OK
BIOS SHADOW RAM ...DISABLED

CMOS RAM ERROR,CHECK BATTERY/RUN SETUP
PRESS F1 KEY TO CONTINUE OR CTRL-ALT ESC FOR SETUP...

 

[Plasma]

First thing I would do is replace the CMOS battery. There's a good chance the old battery has leaked and caused some damage. You may need to repair some traces.

 

[lordhailsham]

First thing I would do is replace the CMOS battery. There's a good chance the old battery has leaked and caused some damage. You may need to repair some traces.

Hi - yep I replaced the BR2330 battery. There was no leakage or any (obvious) damage from the original battery... BUT in full disclosure I did not take out the motherboard and inspect underneath... (pic below shows original battery that I since replaced)

 

[Plasma]

Sorry I missed that in your original post. You are fortunate that it has a lithium battery, most 286 boards had leaky NiCD barrel batteries.

You may want to check the solder joints on the motherboard keyboard connector. Sometimes they break loose with the stress of plugging/unplugging the keyboard.

 

[modem7]

I note that "TESTING CMOS BATTERY ...FAILED" is displayed, however, the situation may be the same as for the IBM AT. That is, in the IBM AT, to remove the 'bad battery' error (displayed on-screen as 161), after replacing the bad battery, one has to go through SETUP (it clears a 'bad battery' flag that is in the SETUP configuration).

 

[T-R-A]

Just an FYI...TIPCs (as well as portable TIPCs) are odd beasts. Had many of them years ago, won during a scrap sale at a Siemens plant where I worked which had been a TI plant earlier. The machines aren't really PC-compatible; almost all software has to be TIPC specific. I was never able to resell those machines I won... wound up giving them away to someone to get out of the storage-building contract. You'd have better luck posting again in the TI forum here, but even then you may not get a lot of response.

 

[lordhailsham]

Sorry I missed that in your original post. You are fortunate that it has a lithium battery, most 286 boards had leaky NiCD barrel batteries.

You may want to check the solder joints on the motherboard keyboard connector. Sometimes they break loose with the stress of plugging/unplugging the keyboard.

yeah now you mention it, it felt a bit stiff inserting... so maybe has been aggressively treated in its past life. Let me see about disassembling and getting the motherboard out for a closer look. cheers! Andy