I have a GDP pocket laptop that I bricked, I had installed a special development bios with all options unlocked, then, hoping to disable USB3 I proceeded to disable all USB. And a cautionary note, never disable USB on a laptop where all devices are USB. laptop was now completely useless.
First thing I found out was the GDP pocket has no bios clear function(header or equivalent). I found one comment in a forum where somebody also had hard bios problems and was able to reflash it with an external programmer. Worth a try, So I bought a cheap programmer, level shifter, soic clip kit off amazon. and.... nothing was working, at this point not knowing if I was doing it wrong or if the process was even possible I sort of abandoned it. And the carcass sat on the healing bench for a year.
Prompted by the bag of parts on the bench and stumbling on another comment on how miserable shitty cheap soic clips are, I bought a good clip, carefully wired it up, and it flashed first try. plugged the battery back in and the infernal thing booted right up, it still had a charge.
So it is possible to reflash a pc firmware(bios) with an external programmer, probably best to remove the chip, but that is not always necessary. and if it is a soic package, get a good clip, I am happy to name drop Pomona electronics for making a quality product that actually worked and saved my little laptop. https://www.pomonaelectronics.com/products/test-clips/ic-tes...
I was trying openbsd and the xhci driver was dropping the external usb drive I had the system on crashing it, The vague hope was that forcing ohci would make the it stable enough to use.
Not the OP, but USB3 can interfere with wireless communications (wireless mice seem highly susceptible). I've had some devices/cables/connections where usb3 was unreliable, and it would be better to use usb2 at much slower speeds.
I always read that as "I'm not detecting a keyboard. If I'm wrong about that let me know by hitting F1. (And if I'm right I don't want to waste time by booting, because you'll have to power down to fix this anyways.)" Because that was in the time before keyboards were hotpluggable.
Some early computers with a key toggled the keyboard power, rather than preventing someone from turning off the power switch... I guess it was more important to keep people from typing things than it was keeping the system powered up. The 80s and early 90s were weird times. /shrug
I refurbish these old Thinkpads sometimes. They're tough to work with but I love the little flapping duck and the whimsical BIOS design. A simpler program from a simpler era.
I have a GDP pocket laptop that I bricked, I had installed a special development bios with all options unlocked, then, hoping to disable USB3 I proceeded to disable all USB. And a cautionary note, never disable USB on a laptop where all devices are USB. laptop was now completely useless.
First thing I found out was the GDP pocket has no bios clear function(header or equivalent). I found one comment in a forum where somebody also had hard bios problems and was able to reflash it with an external programmer. Worth a try, So I bought a cheap programmer, level shifter, soic clip kit off amazon. and.... nothing was working, at this point not knowing if I was doing it wrong or if the process was even possible I sort of abandoned it. And the carcass sat on the healing bench for a year.
Prompted by the bag of parts on the bench and stumbling on another comment on how miserable shitty cheap soic clips are, I bought a good clip, carefully wired it up, and it flashed first try. plugged the battery back in and the infernal thing booted right up, it still had a charge.
So it is possible to reflash a pc firmware(bios) with an external programmer, probably best to remove the chip, but that is not always necessary. and if it is a soic package, get a good clip, I am happy to name drop Pomona electronics for making a quality product that actually worked and saved my little laptop. https://www.pomonaelectronics.com/products/test-clips/ic-tes...
Out of curiosity, why disable USB3 at all?
I was trying openbsd and the xhci driver was dropping the external usb drive I had the system on crashing it, The vague hope was that forcing ohci would make the it stable enough to use.
Not the OP, but USB3 can interfere with wireless communications (wireless mice seem highly susceptible). I've had some devices/cables/connections where usb3 was unreliable, and it would be better to use usb2 at much slower speeds.
I think the golden "catch 22" error will forever be the classic "No keyboard detected, press F1 to continue".
I always read that as "I'm not detecting a keyboard. If I'm wrong about that let me know by hitting F1. (And if I'm right I don't want to waste time by booting, because you'll have to power down to fix this anyways.)" Because that was in the time before keyboards were hotpluggable.
Some early computers with a key toggled the keyboard power, rather than preventing someone from turning off the power switch... I guess it was more important to keep people from typing things than it was keeping the system powered up. The 80s and early 90s were weird times. /shrug
Sound logic. Personally, I have never come across that error when a keyboard was connected.
I refurbish these old Thinkpads sometimes. They're tough to work with but I love the little flapping duck and the whimsical BIOS design. A simpler program from a simpler era.