[ale] Defective BIOS?

[cor.angela at mindspring.com (Cor van Dijk)]

One of my older machines has  windows  on /dev/hda and redhat on 
/dev/hdd. It suddenly refused to boot the /dev/hda. Will only boot 
redhat from a floppy. When I do "/sbin/lilo -t" it tells me
        "Warning: BIOS drive 0x82 may not be accessible"
Initially I thought it was the physical drive, so I tried 3 (three) 
different
drives on /dev/hda, all with the same result, so I am tending to believe 
that the problem is actually were the message says that it is, in the BIOS.
When I try to put the boot record on /dev/hdd I get the same message.
Replacing the 3 volt battery does no good (old one still had over 3 volt 
after nine years!)
Curious thing is that I can mount /dev/hda from /dev/hdd just fine.
Does the BIOS prevent me from accessing the boot sector in /dev/hda?
The mobo is probably a pirated item from china, but the BIOS chip is an 
AWARD, and is  probably tailored to fit the mobo, might be hard to find 
a replacement.
Any pointers? What is BIOS drive 0x82? Is it actually the BIOS? Can it 
be fixed?
Thanks in advance for any help. Cor van Dijk