Access to the CCPC BIOS

Here you find documentation on how to access the BIOS (firmware) of the SM520PCX. Please contact niko.neufeld@cern.ch for any further information.

Accessing the BIOS is rarely necessary. One of the few reasons is to disable the Watchdog, which might be necessary in situations where the network is slow or unreliable. Note that if you disable the watchdog, the PC will simply be stuck when there is a problem during the boot. The only way to get it out of this is a hardware reset. Having said that, the first thing you need is to download the
Remote.zip toolkit

Unfortunately this runs only under Windows. A Linux port would be a nice exercise, but it is so rarely needed and I simply have no time do it. To make things worse, in my experience it only works reasonably well under Windows 98/ME, because it is an MSDOS application and the serial port implementation in the WoW engine (the 16-bit subsytem in Windows NT and higher) is very slow.

You will also need a special null-modem cable, where the wiring has to be like this:

PC Host			PC Target
Signal	Pin	<--->	Pin	Signal
DCD	1	< --->	7,8	RTS, CTS
RxD	2	< --->	3	TxD
TxD	3	< --->	2	RxD
DTR	4	< --->	6	DSR
GND	5	< --->	5	GND
DSR	6	< --->	4	DTR
RTS, CTS	7,8	< --->	1	DCD

Connect the serial port of the PC with the serial port of the host-computer (running Windows). Start remhost.exe on the host computer in a DOS-shell. Power-up the CCPC. You will see the BIOS boot-messages. Using CTRL-S on the host-computer you can enter into the BIOS setup.

Please send comments and suggestions to niko.neufeld@cern.ch.