Conference noted::ibmpc-95

3008.0. "Award BIOS PNP (ESCD?) problem with modem" by GRUFFY::ZAHORA (Rob Zahora) Thu May 08 1997 13:11

    I've run into what I believe may be a BIOS PNP problem when trying to
    install an internal modem in my home system.  I get a curious condition 
    where I get a floppy drive error and an unrecognized LPT1 port on a
    cold  boot. But if I bypass the error and finish the boot to MSDOS
    6.22, I can do a CTRL/ALT/DEL reboot and everyting comes up fine.

    Here's the particulars - the modem card is an Eiger Labs DSVD which 
    takes an extra IRQ for the digital-signal processing chip besides the
    one for the COM port.  The mother board is a Tyan Titan III with Award
    V4.51PG BIOS and Award PNP extension V1.0A.  Other cards in the system
    are a PCI Matrox MGA Millennium video card, a Turtle Beach Tropez Plus
    sound card and a SCSI interface card for a scanner.

    On cold boot I get the following error -

	FLOPPY DISK(S) FAIL (C0)

    If I hit F1 to ignore the error and continue I then get a message

	UPDATING ESCD ... SUCCESS

    and the boot continues.  The DOS prompt appears but I don't have the
    floppy drive or printer port available.  A soft reboot produces another
    successful ESCD message during the process.  After this reboot,
    everything appears to work fine.  I can start WFWG 3.11 and things work
    here as well.

    So what I'd like to know is what should I do to get around the initial
    error?  Note that if I take the modem card out, the cold boot works
    properly.  My guess is that something is not right with the PNP data
    area - the ESCD or extended system configuration data area. 
    Unfortuantely, I've not encountered any utilities to find out what's in
    this area or know of any way to manipulate the data.

    Before I start a trial and error process or re-load the BIOS/CMOS I
    thought I'd ask for any suggestions.