IBM 533 Bios Error

[xayk]

I had three 533's effectively die within six weeks of each other, roughly three years from purchase. Annoying me further, all three have the same symptoms, where the terminal will boot about 10% of the time, but get stuck on the opening bios screen with code "5F" in the upper right-hand corner.

IBM doesn't specify what "5F" means; it pops up just before (perhaps during) the ata device detection, so I've tried a combo of drives and cables, but to no avail. Before I prostrate myself before IBM, has anyone seen this error before?

 

[Keyservicesmw]

Hey did you get this 533 error fixed ?

 

[xayk]

It's still not fixed. In fact, I had *another* 533 at another location start displaying the same symptoms (crashing periodically, not booting periodically, finally just sitting at the 5F screen) last week. I did contact IBM support, who said:

"There is no table of display codes but there are troubleshooting tips that may help. I talked with the PE team and they suggested to try booting without the drive attached. It appears that the drives may have some issue, maybe with the boot sector (virus?) that is making them fail. You could boot the USB Memory Key diagnostics and see if that works. You could also boot the diagnostic diskete and view the CMOS logs for more information."

... with links to the usb and diskette diagnostics. Having tried multiple hard drives, I'm fairly confident it's not a drive problem. I did put the usb memory diagnostic on my key today, but didn't have time to set up a 533 to test it. I'll report back with results tomorrow or the next day.

 

[xayk]

Update:

I dropped one of the 533's off at my dealer a while ago to see if they cold work any magic. They couldn't; however, they asked the IBM-licensed repair guy (who was in their office doing under-contract maint. work) about it, and he said it was a motherboard problem. He did the repair out-of-warranty, and sure enough, the machine booted right up.

So I can't say that every 5F error is a mobo problem, but since I tried everything else, I'm leaning towards that (which is a problem, as I had two additional units go down w/ the 5F in another location recently.) Not sure what my total bill is going to be, but it's ostensibly less than a new terminal. Feh.