How to reset the BIOS on a Vortex86-6071LV

The embedded Linux project came back to life this week when the manufacturer sent us some new video driver source for the SiS 550 on the Vortex86-6071LV. At present the new driver seems to work as well as the old one; i.e. not very well at all…

Anyway, whilst adjusting the BIOS settings for the LCD panel I managed to set them to something which meant that neither the LCD panel nor the external VGA would display anything. Since both displays were dead during boot up and since I hadn’t made a note of the key presses required to navigate the BIOS screens to undo the change I was in a bit of a bind; the device booted OK and I could continue to work on is using a telnet session.

I called the manufacturer last night and they sent me this pdf today which shows the official way to reset the BIOS. It’s a fairly obvious ‘short out the battery’ trick but as you need to do it with a bit of wire (there’s no jumper provided) I’m uploading it here because it details where the bit of wire should be placed and how long for…