Motherboard Bios Flashing at Adrian's Rojak Pot

[Jason]

To some a Bios flash is about the scariest procedure you can perform. One wrong move and your board becomes a paperweight. Adrian's Rojak Pot walks you through a Bios Flash to demistify this procedure and help you in your time of need.

Reputable motherboard manufacturers constantly improve on their
motherboard BIOS and regularly release BIOS updates. These BIOS updates are
important because they correct bugs and sometimes provide additional
capabilities.

[Jason425]

i've lost a mobo and video card flashing the bios..

[Jason]

Jason425, do some research there is a method out there to regain a device froma bad flash. It does involve some work and some hardware knowledge about eeproms.

I will see if I can find the article.

[Jason]

NOTE: I DO NOT KNOW IF THESE PROCEDURES WILL WORK.


Information taken from several online resources.
Recovering A Corrupt Award Bios

To recover an Award bios you will need to create a floppy disk with a working bios file in.BIN format, an Award flash utility and an AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Award bios will not automatically restore the bios information to the system block, for this reason you will need to add the commands necessary to flash the bios in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. The system
will run the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, which will in turn flash the bios. Here are the steps you
need to take:

1) Create a bootable floppy disk.
2) Copy the bios file and flash utility to the diskette.
3) Create a text file with any standard text editor and add the following lines
@ECHO OFF
FLASH763 BIOSFILE.BIN /py

In the above example I am assuming that you are using the FLASH763.EXE flash utility. You
will need to replace the FLASH763 with the name of whatever flash utility you are using and replace the BIOSFILE.BIN with the name of the bios file you are using. You will also need to change the '/py' to whatever command is for your flash utility to automatically program the bios without user intervention.
If you do not know the command to automatically flash your bios, type the name of the flash utility with a space and then /? to display the utility's help screen. The help screen should specify the command switch to automatically flash your bios. If you are using the FLASH763.EXE utility then the switch to automatically flash your bios is '/py'. After you've created the disk, put it in the floppy drive and reboot your system.

Recovering A Corrupt AMI Bios

With motherboards that use "Boot Block Bios" it is possible to recover a corrupted bios because the boot block section of the bios, which is responsible for booting the computer
remains unmodified. When an AMI bios becomes corrupt the system will appear to start, but nothing will appear on the screen, the floppy drive light will come on and the system will access the floppy drive repeatedly. If your motherboard has an ISA slot and you have an old ISA video card lying around, put he ISA video card in your system and connect the monitor. The boot block section of the bios only supports ISA video cards, so if you don't have an ISA video card or your motherboard does not have ISA slots, you will have to restore your bios blind, with no monitor to show you what's going on.
AMI has integrated a recovery routine into the boot block of the bios, which in the event the bios becomes corrupt can be used to restore the bios to a working state. The routine is called when the system block of the bios s empty. The restore routine will access the floppy drive looking for a bios file named AMIBOOT.ROM, this is why the floppy drive light comes on and the drive spins. If the file is found it is loaded into the system block of the bios to replace the missing information. To restore your bios simply copy a working bios file to a floppy disk and rename it AMIBOOT.ROM, then insert it into the computer while the power is on. The disk does not need to be bootable or contain a flash utility. After about four minutes the system will beep four times. Remove the floppy disk from the drive and reboot the computer. The bios should now be restored.

[Jason]

do a Google Search for Recovering from a Bad Bios Flash and you will see there is a lot of information out there. More than not, you have to hope that your bios is only partially dead or corrupted and not totally dead. In any case, a replacement bios chip will recover the item like new.

[Jason425]

Ohh well, it's an RD ram mobo and I don't have any RDRAM... it's a p4t533-c and I put it in the box ever since I messed the bios.. if anyone wants to buy it for pretty cheap, let me know!