I recently purchased an old IBM PS/2 L40 SX and booted up- showed a 161 163 error.THE CMOS battery is dead and my C drive is not recognized when I boot DOS from a startup disk. The A drive is fine. What is my problem? Do I need a reference disk to get into my BIOS? If so, how can I get one and what is the procedure to rectify the problem? Thanks Fred S

All I did was googled "IBM PS/2 L40 SX" (in quotes just like shown) and a whole bunch of hits popped up. The very first one has all kinds of good information and a link to a file that will create a configuration diskette: http://hpholm.dk/L40SX.html I would recommend downloading the reference material on this page and reading up on it.

On powering on, does the first screen show which key or keys to press in order to enter setup. If so, it may be possible to enter the hdd params, such that the pc will then boot off it. However, until a good cmos battery is fitted, the params will reset back to default settings, every time the pc is switched off. Good Luck - Keep us posted.

the L40SX definitely needs a Ref disk to setup. Like all PS/2 machines, there is no onboard BIOS setup program, thanks to IBM making an early attempt at Plug'n'Pray. that was the 386SX/16 right? minumum spec for Win95 methinks? its a cool little portable PS/2. I have ran OS/2 Warp 3, DOS/Win31, and Windows 95 on this model. Apart from the LPT, COM and Modem ports, there is no expansion options for this machine. mine was the 80MB hard drive / 12MB RAM model. Def fix it up - it WILL be worth money in the future. one thing i would try on it if you got it working - DOS games like Space Invaders, Alley Cat, Digger, others i cannot think of, and heck maybe even Wolfenstein 3-D (386 cpu may be lacking for that)... good luck wolf