Aopen AK86-L origin bios capabilities

  I'll probably come off as a total slug, but the machine I want to know
about is down getting some hardware added.

I have the Aopen AK86-L mobo manual but I'm not finding this
information.

I want to know if that Aopen boards BIOS (original .. never flashed)
circa 2007, would have the capability of booting from a USB
cd/dvd-rom.

That board has Phoenix-Award bios.

Can one set USB devices in that bios area where boot sequence is set?

 
Well I can't find the full manual online but I would be very
surprised if you couldn't.  That has been pretty much standard for
several years now.

--
Andrew Smallshaw
andrews@sdf.lonestar.org

 

Yeah, I couldn't find the manual online either, but dug out my paper
one and it doesn't say.

Thanks for the input.. I thougt the same but since I plan on ditching
the IDE cdrom in favor of hooking more hdd up, I wanted to know for
sure before reassembly with no IDE cdrom.

 reader@newsguy.com writes:


Oh - meant to ask.  Is this (boot from usb device) the kind of thing
that might be done in those flashable updates?

That particular board was purchased in 2007 but that model has been
availalble since quite a bit earlier... maybe even 2003 or so.

So I wasn't sure one bought in 2007 might still have the original bios
from 2003.

 On Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:08:34 -0500, reader@newsguy.com
wrote:


If the problem was that you were  running out of IDE
channels, you might consider getting a PCI IDE controller
card instead of an external USB optical enclosure.


Generally board support the feature with the first bios, but
if the feature had a bug, a subsequent bios version might
resolve it.  Read the bios notes, if AOpen provides those,
to see if they mention any seemingly relevant changes.


It seems to be socket 754, I don't recall exactly when 754
boards came out but probably 2004.  This changes the
situation a little bit, a fair number of boards in that era
were supposed to be able to boot USB drives of various
types, even had bios settings for that, but when it came to
actually being able to, some couldn't.



Wrote down the bios version number displayed during POST,
that should tell you if it's the original bios or a later
one.  The board might have been made a year or more before
you bought it, so then whatever bios version they had
released at the time of flashing it would be what is on it.

You could just flash the newest bios from AOpen's site, then
you're not left wondering anymore.  It might resolve other
bugs besides this potential one.