Compaq Bios Access after formating

we have an old Compaq Prosignia PII (Bios 25/09/97) 233Mhz 160mbEDO Ram. After low level formatting we can no longer access the bios , we have now found that there was a partition on the Hard Disk with software on it for accessing the bios, now we can nolonger access the bios because of this we are now looking for the correct software for this purpose, after scanning the Compaq/HP website we are a litle lost as to what file we actually need. can anyone point me to where and what file we need ? thanks in advance.