When I first powered up my t180 I hit the DEL key and got into the BIOS, made a few adjustments and booted off a USB key. A little while later I tried to get back into the BIOS I found I couldn't no matter what I tried. F7 should have brought up a Boot Menu but didn't. I wasted some time over this before the penny dropped and I dug out another keyboard. This fixed the problem. For some reason in the early just-powered-up stages the BIOS does not like my Labtec USB keyboard. It works fine at any other time. This maybe something to bear in mind if you have a similar problem.
On power up the DEL key will get you into the BIOS which has an American Megatrends Inc copyright message. At the top of the screen it's identified as the Aptio Setup Utility with a 2013 copyright. The 'Main' screen identifies it as BIOS version t180M v1.24 dated 06/23/2014.
One thing that is noticeable by its absence from the 'Main' BIOS screen - and doesn't appear elsewhere - is any date/time setting. This ties in with the fact that there is no CMOS backup battery fitted to the t180.
When you boot into an OS on the t180 you'll find the date is 1st January 2014.
Under the Advanced tab is an entry for CSM Configuration. This is the Compatibility Support Module Configuration and is where you setup UEFI and/or Legacy booting.
Elsewhere the Boot tab lets you setup the order of booting.
On power-up, if you wish to override the default booting behaviour, hitting the F7 key brings up a boot menu. (If an administrator password is set you have to enter that first). On my system with a Sandisk Cruzer Blade USB pen drive plugged in I got:
Please Select Boot DeviceUEFI: Built-in EFI Shell UEFI OS Realtek PXE B01 D00 UEFI: SanDisk Cruzer Blade 1.26 SanDisk Cruzer Blade 1.26 Enter Setup↑ and ↓ to move selection
ENTER to select boot device
ESC to boot using defaults
You use the up/down arrow keys to select a particular entry and then hit Enter to boot it.
My t180L came with no BIOS password set. At the time of writing I do not know if Atrust have a default password for the t180 nor do I know how to reset the password if one is set. Google has been no help here nor has the t180L User Manual.
As noted elsewhere there is no battery fitted to the t180 and so there is no configuration information held in a battery-backed CMOS chip that you can clear by disconnecting the battery. I did not see any links on the bottom of the circuit board that could be temporarily moved in order to get the BIOS to wipe out a password on power-up. I haven't been able to check the top of the circuit board as that is inaccessible as far as I'm concerned at the moment.
I did temporarily set a password and made a few attempts to clear it without any success.
So, if a BIOS password is set, you're stuffed. If you know better please let me know.
On power-up pressing the ESC key brings up the Atrust Thin Client Menu. On my t180L this gave me the options:
Normal Mode Safe Mode Reset Mode Firmware Update Reboot Shutdown
I tried Reset Mode. This brought me into:
Welcome to the Atrust Control System... Do you want to reset all settings to defaul?[y/n] (default=n): Re-formatting disk Re-initializing disk... Checking disk... All operations done Press Enter to reboot:
...which effectively reset the onboard Linux firmware to the out-of-the-factory state, but did not reset the BIOS password that I had set at the time.