You press the DEL key on power up to get into the BIOS Setup screens. However I found that this did not work with my usual Labtec USB connected keyboard. I ended up having to plug an old HP keyboard into the PS/2 socket in order to interrupt the startup sequence.
The BIOS is an AMI BIOS and identifies itself as BIOS SETUP UTILITY and under the MAIN tab my unit states:
AMIBIOS Version :08.00.15 Build Date:09/24/09
There are the usual configuration options in a BIOS of that age.
One thing I find strange is that I can't find any options to set the boot priority. According to the (generic) manual the 'Boot' BIOS screen should show:
> Boot Devices Priority > Hard Disk Drives > Removable Drives > CD/DVD Drives Quick Boot [Enabled] Full Screen LOGO Show [Disabled] AddOn ROM Display Mode [Force BIOS] Bootup Num-Lock [On] PS/2 Mouse Support [Auto] Wait for 'F1' If Error [Enabled] Hit 'DEL' Message Display [Enabled] Interrupt 19 Capture [Disabled]
Mine just shows:
Quick Boot [Enabled] Full Screen LOGO Show [Disabled] AddOn ROM Display Mode [Force BIOS] Bootup Num-Lock [On] PS/2 Mouse Support [Auto] Wait for 'F1' If Error [Enabled] Hit 'DEL' Message Display [Enabled] Interrupt 19 Capture [Disabled]
There is no sign of the 'Boot Devices Priority' option. Interestingly, even though the 'DEL' message option is enabled, no message appears as the system starts up.
It looks as though some parts of the standard BIOS have been stripped out.
My unit happily booted Tiny Core 12.0 from a pen drive. Exactly how it behaves if you have some onboard flash installed I'm not too sure. It has been a while since I've used a thin client with a 40-pin IDE connector and I couldn't immediately locate any of my old 40-pin hardware configurations to test this out.