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

[Paul van den Bergen]

Hi Gizimoto,
this is infact how the second MB died...

the first MB to get fried got fried when the PC hung during a Bios 
upgrade... even saved the original BIOS setting, but it didn't help 
because the bios flash program hung and the PC shut down part way 
through the flashing...  not happy jan!

SO I had heard about this technique so I tried it... Voila! two dead MB'
s  My wife was not happy. (it was her MB) Neither was I!  so one new MB 
later (plus CPU + HD - if you are going to upgrade...)

Gizimoto wrote:

>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
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>with "unsubscribe melbwireless" in the body of the message
>>
>
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-- 
Dr Paul van den Bergen
SERC, RMIT University
paul at serc.rmit.edu.au
+613 9925 1624 phone
+613 9925 5699 fax
goofey: bulwynkl




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