[MLB-WIRELESS] How to repair a Bios or two

[Gizimoto]

If you have another identical motherboard you can try a hot-swap.  It sounds
like when [2] the chip is deaded.

The hot-swap technique goes like this,
    Power-up good motherboard
    Pull BIOS Chip Out (carefully)
    Put dead BIOS in
    Flash the dead bios
    Power down
    Swap chips back to normal
    Boot dead m/b and cross fingers ;)

NOTE: You may end up with another dead m/b - do so at your own risk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul van den Bergen" <paul at serc.rmit.edu.au>
To: <melbwireless at wireless.org.au>
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 11:47 AM
Subject: [MLB-WIRELESS] How to repair a Bios or two


> Hi all,
>
> Those who know me will know that occasionally I go through clumsy
> phases...  during one of these phases about a year or so ago I managed
> to kill the BIOS chips on two motherboards - lets call them A and B[1].
>   since then I have been deperately trying to fix them - that means I
> have done nothing about it until last week when I got the courage up to
> attemtp a bios boot block/floppy drive repair...
>
> the consequences of that was to almost let the magic smoke escape on
> system A's bios chip[2].  System B didn't seem to do anything.
>
> It is posible that the flash sequence I have edited into the
> autoexec.bat (dos 6.22 boot disk) does not work but since I cannot find
> a manual for the flash  programs anywhere, and am kinda reluctant to try
> it on a working system, just in case it DOES work...
>
> there is an article on sysopt.com that started this all off.
> http://www.sysopt.com/articles/recoverbios/index.html
>
> Question number 1)
> Anyhoo, I have found a place in SA that does BIOS chips called OZFlash,
> www.ozflash.com.au, who will do a bios chip for $32 pph $7.  does anyone
> know a place in melbourne who does this so I can either take the MB in
> or avoid the postage cost?  this is especially relevant for System A
> which I believe has an unrecoverable bios chip.
>
> Question number 2)
> DOes anyone have a flash burner that is capable of burning a BIOS chip?
>   The bios downloads for both chips are readily available, and if the
> chips I have cannot be burned I can likely get new bare chips from
> Oatleyelectronics, or similar relatively cheaply.  This applies to both
> A and B
>
> Question Number 3)
> Does anyone have any experience with the command line format for the
> types of flash utilities (cross finger and hope the bios chips are OK
> but have lost video support[3]) so that I can have a good idea that the
> command in the autoexec is likely to work...
>
>
> Question number 4)
> assuming that this is not actually the problem and that there is a
> further issue, does anyone have access to a POST card?
>
>
> [1] System A:  Asus P/I P55T2P4 R3.10 with Award Bios 1995 PCI/PNP 586
> on a FLASH P28F001 BXT0302 chip
> System B: Gigabyte GA-686LX Rev 1D with Award Bios 1997 PCI/PNP 686 -
> have not ripped the stickers off to see the chip make/model yet - it is
> a longer chip than the Asus chip (the board actually has 2 bios chip
> slots - one long, the second shorter (suits the chip size in system A).
>
> [2] No smoke escaped, but the chip got hot enough to distort the sticker
> on the outside of the chip... and it don't work no more even to boot
> block stage w/- video.  basically I put the chip in backwards *shrug*.
>
>
> --
> Dr Paul van den Bergen
> SERC, RMIT University
> paul at serc.rmit.edu.au
> +613 9925 1624 phone
> +613 9925 5699 fax
> goofey: bulwynkl
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at wireless.org.au
> with "unsubscribe melbwireless" in the body of the message
>


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