I fried an old H1/K1(?) on an ir330 by trying to reset the bios. It just said "wait..." and never came up with the run setup screen so I could reinstall the system software. I reset the bios and then it just went right into an E677 when I powered up. I'm glad the board wasn't any good anyway but I haven't tried to reset the bios since.
I agree with Screwtape, it sounds memory related. In my experience corrupt system software is usually the eternal "Wait..." screen, it never even gets fully booted to test pinging or printing. Flaky problems more often seem to be related to the RAM. Since bad RAM can corrupt the system software I'd replace it before reinstalling.
Bookmarks