Cannot access my R30 BIOS....help!

I had to dust off my old R30 Thinkpad while my T41p is in the shop.
So, I'm a bit rusty with the little details of how to access the BIOS
and all that. The IBM site says that one hits the F1 button, or holds
it down, while the IBM logo is on the screen during the bootup. This
isn't working for me, and I've tried everything. I've tried holding,
tapping, or pressing once or twice the function keys F1, F2, F11, F12
(the most obvious choices) but nothing seems to work! Yet, I was able
to upgrade the BIOS seemingly successfully (by running the appropriate
..exe file downloaded from the IBM site).

Any ideas? The black "ThinkPad" button (now called "AccessIBM" on the
newer models) seems to have no effect either.

If it helps, I'm running a dual boot (LILO) machine with Win2k and
Redhat 9.0 (shrike). Is it possible that LILO is screwing up the whole
F1 button, access-to-BIOS thing? Ugh.

Thanks,
JB

"joeblow" <> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
>
> I had to dust off my old R30 Thinkpad while my T41p is in the shop.
> So, I'm a bit rusty with the little details of how to access the BIOS
> and all that. The IBM site says that one hits the F1 button, or holds
> it down, while the IBM logo is on the screen during the bootup. This
> isn't working for me, and I've tried everything. I've tried holding,
> tapping, or pressing once or twice the function keys F1, F2, F11, F12
> (the most obvious choices) but nothing seems to work! Yet, I was able
> to upgrade the BIOS seemingly successfully (by running the appropriate
> .exe file downloaded from the IBM site).
>
> Any ideas? The black "ThinkPad" button (now called "AccessIBM" on the
> newer models) seems to have no effect either.
>
> If it helps, I'm running a dual boot (LILO) machine with Win2k and
> Redhat 9.0 (shrike). Is it possible that LILO is screwing up the whole
> F1 button, access-to-BIOS thing? Ugh.
>
> Thanks,
> JB

Power on your R30, wait for the IBM logo screen, wait 1 second, press and
hold the F1 key. If that doesn't work, wait 2 seconds next time.

I used to have a hard time getting into the BIOS of my T23, until I got the
timing right.

g

Actually, you turned out to be right about this, which I learned after
repeated attempts to get the "timing" right. Funny though, I've never
had this much trouble simply getting into the BIOS before, but that's
life. Thanks for your response!

JB

I find the best approach is to press the key about once per second
until you see the menu screen start to load. Sometimes if you hold the
key down you get a keyboard error. The BIOS 'thinks' one of the keys
is stuck.