Re: Strange BIOS behavior
- From: Tyrfing <DoNotEmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 18 Jul 2005 16:36:47 -0400
"Tyrfing" wrote:
> I tried to flash my bios on my P4P800 - VM board to bios
> version 1.16 to be able to support the CT-479 adapter. After
> trying to figure out which version of BIOS I needed at
> asus.com I thought that an upgrade to 1.08 was necessary
> before I could flash to 1.16. The first flash went ok, but
> when making the second one to version 1.16, the screen went
> blank. Since I didn't know any better I turned the power off
> and that bios chip was dead. After searching the net for any
> tips on how to reprogram the chip I stumbled on a method that
> seemed a good one. I got another identical board which I
> booted up inte dos "hot swapped" the bios-chips and
> reprogrammed the blank/corrupted one. This kind of worked.
>
> Now I can start up with the previously bad chip, but I'm not
> able to save any settings to the CMOS. I get the same error as
> a couple of other people in this forum. CMOS settings wrong
> and time/date not set. And any and all changes I make are gone
> at the next bootup.
>
> I might also add that the first flashes were totally
> unneccasary too, in my haste I mistook board revision for BIOS
> revision. And I flashed from 1.16 to 1.08 and back to 1.16
> again. What I find strange with the now "working" chip is that
> the same errors occurs on both motherboards when I use that
> chip, which leads me to belive that it is something in the
> chip that is wrong. I thought that when I was flashing a chip
> I reprogrammed it completly. Since the verification after the
> flash said all ok I cant understand what is wrong. Might there
> be some areas of the BIOS chip that are unaffected by a flash
> that is causing this error?
>
> I can't figure this one out for myself so I'm asking for your
> help. Does anyone know what can be causing this behavior. The
> board was out of the box new and I have no additional hardware
> installed. Only a floppy drive to flash from. And as far as I
> can tell the chip itself is physically undamaged, I took ESD
> precautions and was very careful when taking it out using
> proper tools. All help or tips are welcome.
>
> Thanks in advance
> Tyrfing
>
>
> After some more experimenting I remembered what I did just
> before the board initially died. The second flash went kind of
> ok too, but I couldn't save to CMOS after that. Therefore I
> tried the recoveryfunction of the utilities cd that was
> shipped with the board. The BIOS on that cd was what made it
> die. Not the upgrade from 1.08 -> 1.16 though that made the
> chip unable to store any changes. Too bad I had to make the
> same thing twice to remeber what I did.
Finally this problem is solved, seems like I made a big mistake
assuming the afudos version shipped with the utilities/driver cd was
up to date. It wasn?t. And the recovery bios image shipped on the same
cd was completly f....d up. Probing it with Asus Update only resulted
in blank letterboxes and something resembling how chineese letters
look on a western computer. Trying to flash over it from there
resulted in a dead end with a built in warning for trying to flash a
incompatible bios image. Hmmm, thats funny. Allow me to flash using an
incompatible image and the refuse me to revert the process due to
incompatability issuses.
After using the "hot swap" method again to get the chip running,
flashed it to 1.17 with afudos version 2.07 downloaded from a third
party site, since I can?t seem to find anything on asus?s webpage
(that is when it?s not down due to massive requests or whatever they
give as a reason). And it?s working flawlessly again. There were some
info about a boot section or something like that, may have been boot
sector.. not sure, when I was flashing this time so there may be a
part of the BIOS you couldn?t reach before 2.07.
Anyhow must just complain about this afudos program some more, how can
you make a piece of software that you constantly upgrade and not leave
any info about which version you are using? Seems like they have
started with that on 2.07 which clearly says version 2.07, but that?s
no help if your stuck with the shipped version or the from asus
downloaded older versions of the program who doestn?t say anything
about version. Sadly this looks like something right up asus?s alley,
tell you to check asus webpage for updates when you are on asus
webpage looking for updates. WTF?
Hope my experiences can help somebody. Check versions closely and
don?t trust that your product comes with up to date software.
/Tyrfing
.
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