Biostar M6VBE-A (maybe dead)
 

Hello everybody.

I have a Biostar M6VBE-A mobo, I suppose.

On start up appears the following:

Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
VBE-A 1118A
11/18/1999-693A-596-8671-2A6LGB09C-00

Following the instructions of www.wimbios.com (2A6LG stands for Via Apollo Pro Plus (692/596) Chipset and B0 stands for Biostar) and the programs CTBIOS v 1.5 and Everest Home Edition (AIDA32) 1.10 (I really recomend this program) the mobo must be a Biostar M6VBE-A so I visiited the Biostar site (www.biostar.com.tw) and I found the mobo and tried to reach the latest BIOS upgrade.

First surprise: in the M6VBE-A there are two upgrades in http://www.biostar.com.tw/support/bi...?model=M6VBE-A; one for M6VBE-A and one for M6VBE. If there are two different mobos why put two upgrades on the same page?
So I decided to use the upgrade M6VBE-A Ver 1.1 & afterward following the instructions for a Award BIOS.

When the program tried to update the BIOS a message appeared indicating that the BIOS upgrade do not match the BIOS is on the motherboard.

So I thought (wrongly) it was the other BIOS upgrade (M6VBE Ver 1.0) the right one. If I looked more carefully to the instructions I should realized the upgrade I tried to install it was older (1999/06/24) that the mobo BIOS (following the instructions in http://www.biostar.com.tw/support/bios/index.php3 the mobo BIOS date was 1999/18/11).

I installed the BIOS upgrade and after that the computer does not start up. It has power, the hard disks are spinning and the CD-RW and the DVD both lights on. But on the monitor appears nothing. On the other hand, the floppy disk is not trying to read nothing.

I pull off the battery and plug it again and: nothing.

I cleared the CMOS and: nothing.

What can I do to return the mobo from hell?

If the mobo is lost, another question.

The computer has two hard disks with an Aralion Ultima PC133 RAID controller and a Windows XP Professional. If I buy a new motherboard and install the hard disks on it with the RAID controller, can I maintain the information without formating the hard drives (I gues I will have to reinstall all the Operative System)?

Thanks,

Aturdido.