padgett%tccslr.dnet@uvs1.orl.mmc.com (Padgett Peterson) (02/19/91)
>From: cosc13gb@jetson.uh.edu > bye (sp.) the way, University of Houston can disable boot up from > drive A: no matter that you has turn the machine off that is pretty > impressive hu? But I don't how they do it Several MS-DOS platforms can do this (Zenith, Compaq) and any PC could impliment it by storing a flag in CMOS. However, only a few manufacturers have chosen to impliment it in the BIOS (it must be done in ROM). Unfortunately in the case of my Zenith, it will only look for disks that its BIOS can find. Failing this it will check for a floppy even if told not to. (I have a hardcard that uses its own ROM extension and no matter how the CMOS is set, the Zenith will always go for the floppy first.) Computer Shopper ads indicate that a 386 BIOS chipset (choice of several) goes for about $70 but I do not know if any of those replacements impliment this. Incidently, there must be an override somewhere or maintenance would be a nightmare. Warmly, Padgett