Asus A7V333 bios

[IRJack]

I just flashed and hosed my bios on my a7v333, attempting to go from 1005 to 1007. Anybody know what format the bios file from asus is written in??? I have a programmer that supports the device (SST 49FL020 ) , but I also have several dozen choices for data format.
I'm sure the problem is the chip, because it's blank.

Thanks in advance.

 

[IRJack]

Almost forgot, here's the system:

1.4Ghz Athlon XP (1600+)
Asus A7V333 (no raid)
Crucial 256MB DDR2100
Gainward Geforce 3 64MB
Maxtor 40GB ATA133 7200rpm
Pioneer 16x DVD
Sony 8x4x40 CDRW
InWin Q500 Case
Antec TruePower 330W

No problems until after flash - used Asus Live Update from Win98SE. This is probably where things went wrong - should have flashed from DOS instead of using Asus' flash program. Live Update reported 100% program and 100% verified. Upon reboot - nothing. Voice POST reports "System failed CPU Test", and no video. If not for the built voice message, I would have nothing at all.

 

[IRJack]

bump

 

[onelin]

hmm,sounds pretty nasty you need a BIOS savior! I picked one up with my A7V333-raid... going to install it before I do any BIOS mods. well spent $25 ...I hope you can get by...but I'm in a PSU predicament and cannot do much till it blows over tomorrow... just helpin your post not get buried

 

[IRJack]

Thanks for the reply onelin0. I got a new bios chip from Asus yesterday and tried it out. Guess that's not the only part that got hosed when I flashed, because it's still not up even with the new chip. Sounds like it may be RMA time. I'll limp along on my old KT7A-Raid for a while longer.

Note to Abit KT7A v1.01 users: Abit doesn't list support for Athlon XP until v1.03 (I believe), but my XP1600+ was recognized by bios and is up and running. Didn't pay much attention at the time, but the bios listed up to at least XP1800+ support when I was setting up. Running bios version 64.

 

[onelin]

oh boy, sounds like you're having the same probs I am. I don't DARE flash my BIOS. 'cuz guess what, Asus site as well as the RMI site (bios savior) had 0 info on the A7V333 bios chip...and it has the new 4mbit type or something, anyway... I got the wrong one! this board is not stable at all, I can't even run my mem at anything but SPD or it craps out and windows gets corrupt ... I lost all my music and years of essential simple utilities (pc cillin, winzip, winamp, etc etc... shareware and stuff I bought like bpftp) I am on dialup and this is a major waste of my time. what vendor did you buy yours from? it is either my motherboard or my RAM...I am going to do one post to try to figure out what the issue is...it is definitely isolated to memory settings and I already changed the jumpers so that isn't it...

 

[mechBgon]

I also blasted an A7V333-R BIOS (my supervisor's nephew's board) trying to go from 1005 to 1006. Here is the lowdown:

We had installed Windows, run Windows Update, just about done, and I decided to flash the BIOS from 1005 to 1006. My own board has 1006, and I had noticed at least one option missing from his 1005. So I downloaded 1006, looked at the number of bytes, which was 216016 bytes, put it on floppy, took it to the other PC, put it on the hard drive, looked at the number of bytes (still 216016), and used Asus' Windows-based flash utility, which ran correctly and asked me to shut down. I had checked both of the two checkboxes about resetting to default and reserving DMI or whatever it says. I shut down... and it would not POST. Every second or third attempt would get "System CPU Fail! System CPU Fail!" from the onboard voice.

Soooo.... after trying everything else, I POST'ed my own working board to a DOS prompt, pulled out :Q my good BIOS chip, put the misprogrammed one in the socket, and flashed it. STILL no dice. Thankfully my own chip still worked, but I wasn't about to try my good chip in the other board. We called Asus on the phone and RMA'ed the board, and I lent him my K7S5A for the meantime.

Now here's the interesting part: Amidst the many steps I tried, I subsequently went back to Asus' site to re-download the BIOS. The same BIOS 1006 was now 216116 bytes, not 216016 bytes. Is that interesting, or what?

Asus had some kind of obscure warning about not trying to go from 1004 to 1005+ using one of their three flash methods, which I think was the "Alt-F2-while-booting" method. However, I'm wondering if they had posted a faulty BIOS (no pun intended) and I just happened to use it. What are your .awd file sizes, if you still have yours? Interesting to see that Asus' FTP server, which hosts the BIOS files and manuals, is unavailable. Their German site has the 1007 BIOS but no other versions.

 

[onelin]

FYI: my board arrived (retail) with 1005 installed. I finally decided to brave it and I flashed to 1007, odd that their site is down but the update program work (I know it's risky, but at this point WTH -- it worked) ... added optimal/turbo SPD settings... tried those out. same windows stuff. page fault in non-aged area, ntfs.sys and win32k.sys files having issues loading... finally settles on UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME until I change it to back to optimal / by SPD (2.5/3/3/6) and all the problems vanish in an instant. I want my bios savior before I toy with all the mylogo stuff though, that and the firewire are why I really wanted this board... too bad it was too unstable (had to reinstall it again today, lost a lot of stuff since I couldn't access the NTFS drive and 'moved' not 'copied' a couple dirs of essential (but not personal, those are on a diff drive) files. Recommend any tools for when this stuff happens? NTFS is nice, but not worth the hassle IMO ...I keep my backup drive FAT32 or I'd really be screwed. I think I'm going to start an A7V333 general help thread with some of the information I've learned.

*edit* : oh yeah, both the size of my 1005 dump and the 1007 I got via autoupdate (from the German site?) are 262,144 bytes.

 

[mechBgon]

I did the MyLogo and the hard part is simply getting your desired picture to look good in 16 colors (4-bit). Being the author of the

<-- Cheetah avatar

...I made it into a 640x480 BMP and 4-bitted it. Very fun!

I included some instructions here which may help with the color conversion, if anyone needs a method to follow: thread

 

[onelin]

sweet! I might have to try something like that soon. 1007 seems like it has a few more options...but it still won't do the high mem. how worthwhile do you think it is for me to pursue it? 3dmark2001se works, all q3 engine games work... I know direct3d will too, but I have to be careful not to use the 28.32's or I'll have infinite loop issues.
3dmark scores in 1024x768x32 defaults = 9474 3dmarks -- with no tweaks and the MSI drivers
(link)
SoFII runs 'ok' at 1024x768 high details...but I can tell it isn't quite up to snuff. JKII is probably the same story...
Sisoft Sandra memory scores:
1852MB/s int
1772MB/s float
87% effficiency (estimated) on int
81% efficiency (estimated) on float
this is the part that seems really low...considering it's PC2700. I don't care about benches though, I just want as close to my maximum real-world performance as reasonably possible with this setup.

I don't want to be a whiner, I just paid extra $$$ for this Corsair mem that won't even run in spec @ 266 when it's certified 333? (PC2700) so I ask is it worth the trouble? and believe me...it's a lot of trouble w/ flying out to Seattle in 2 days... I want this puppy safe & sound...may need to UPS insured. thanks again once I get Mylogo runnin this'l make it more worthwhile heh

 

[mechBgon]

I can't give any feedback on the performance differences (if any) of the different BIOS revisions, and I cheesed out and bought plain old Crucial PC2100 (2 256Mb DIMMS) for my system, which believe it or not is a pure office computer with a TNT2 Vanta video card (and a 15k SCSI drive, and a 10k SCSI drive, and a burner, and a PCMCIA bay, and an Asus iPanel [do not bother getting one] and a 17" LCD monitor...). The supervisor's nephew's system, once we got it rolling again, ran 3DMark2001SE and got an 8092 with a 128Mb Radeon8500LE, using SPD timings on a PC2100 Crucial module and an XP1900+.

My counsel is this: hold on for dear life to the exact precise BIOS that you flashed successfully. Burn it to a CD or something! You know that one works, so you can base your MyLogo experiments off of it repeatedly with confidence, see what I'm saying? Little risk, unless the power goes out while flashing. The main thing added in 1007 was the ability to specify a particular CPU shutdown temperature, rather than leaving it entirely in C.O.P.'s control, and you can probably live without that.

It really is a bummer that your board doesn't run your nice Corsair memory at full potential, don't know what to tell you. You could try boosting the memory voltage to the next level using those jumpers, if you want to... I have one more idea to try, and that is switching from USCW to UC in the BIOS. Uncacheable Speculative Combined Writes is described as something that only advanced video cards do, and my own system won't boot into Windows if it's set to USCW instead of UC. Then again, there's a difference between a TNT2 Vanta and a GF4. Still, you might give it a try. Good luck!

edit: also, I'd be curious to hear from anyone who customizes the POST voice messages. How about "The Force is strong with this one!"

 

[onelin]

heck yeah, I'm going to make sure I hold onto this sucker!

btw, my card (in my P3V4X) does USWC, but windows WAS whiney and crashy on boot with it, so this whole time I am using UC as a precaution already. (hmm maybe I'll try the other way too, can't hurt - I know it does it) I just recently have the GF4... my GF1 I know didn't do USWC, actually it might've... but ID on't think my old TNT would.

things I am trying today (in order, sort of):
1) switching my DIMM to slots 1 and 2 (it's been happy in 3 by itself, but not workin right so)
2) voltages (which it doesn't look like you can do in the BIOS at all except VCore?)
3) ??? maybe something else
btw, I got my memory from mwave so even in Seattle it's very easy for me to try to exchange that... mobo was from NY though (closer to me, along w/ cpu) so that is a real pain. I just want to RMA in time if I need to.

rofl... I want to try that winbond stuff too. now THAT would be hilarious and cool (I like these post msgs, but the stock ones are getting old -- still very helpful, let me figure out REAL FAST how to not try to get 333 fsb) ... I am pretty much satisfied with the gaming, but I KNOW it can push more fps in 1024x768 (my goal with my old 17" mon) so it's fully smooth.

I'll let ya know after I try all this stuff. any particular things to try?
it's odd, the jumpers weren't on JP0-1 on each set ...
it was something like
XX0
0XX
or the mirrored way... I should've written it down.

*edit* doesn't matter, I can see it in the pic at Lostcircuits and OCmodshop reviews... I will try the dimm slot changes, and then I will try fiddling w/ voltage. maybe this mem has some kind of built in regulation, also before after running it fine for a while and opening er up, the heat spreaders weren't even warm it was so cool... so, not that worried about it. the sites were able to take it to 186 fsb at lowest timings (I found out a couple more to fiddle with) so 133 and 166 should really be cake. (w/ default voltage, at that) ... sandra scores were not dramatically higher, though... 166/2-2-2-5-1(that last precharge thing) got like 2200/2100 ...