Boot-menu catch

Claim. reboot-to Delete reached the setup utility of a real AMI Aptio (UEFI) BIOS by tapping a key through POST, and the machine came back after a clean exit.

Method. The command sends Ctrl+Alt+Del, watches for the display to drop at POST, then taps the named key (any key or a chord such as Ctrl+F12) until the run ends. Frames were captured with arrow keys only. The setup was left with "Discard Changes and Exit", after reading the dialog first ("Quit without saving?"), so nothing was saved.

Sample size. One machine, one successful run of the reported sequence (Delete tapped 113 times). No success rate is claimed.

Result. Landed in setup. The target was back on ssh in 44 s on its pending kernel with no failed units.

Limits.

• One run, one board. This is a demonstration, not a rate.
• An earlier runbook for a NAS board (Ctrl+F12 for the boot menu, under 400 ms window) is procedure, not a measured result on this page.
• No power-button control: this Comet has no ATX board.
• BIOSes may ignore a flood of keys or lose the keyboard; that is reported by others, not measured here.

Separate video capture (2026-09-30). A graceful SSH reboot of the same test target was followed by 119 timed Delete taps over 35 seconds. A real Comet frame shows AMI Aptio setup. The operator then used Escape and Enter to exit without saving, and a later frame shows a clean login prompt. The video omits an idle inspection pause and plays retained frames at about three times capture speed. This run did not use OCR to stop the key loop, and its timing is not combined with the earlier 44-second result. See capture method and integrity record.

Raw data. The earlier benchmark is documented in docs/evidence-sources/20260929-kvm-ocr-benchmark.md (section "A real BIOS"). The later capture's timestamps and hashes are in docs/evidence-sources/20260930-comet-bios-manifest.json and 20260930-comet-bios-SHA256SUMS. The full raw JPEG set is stored privately with the operator.