Biostar M6VBE-A (maybe dead)

[aturdido]

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/bios/bios.php3?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.

 

[o1die]

You can get a mobo with the same chipset, and the operating system should load, maybe changing or requesting a reinstall of a few devices. You might find one on ebay, justdeals, or computersurplus.com. Your board has the via apollo pro chipset for slot 1. One board I saw has both slot 1 and socket 370 capabilities. The boards are rare, so you may have to use a different chipset. My favorite board for slot 1 was the abit bh6, using the Intel 440bx chipset. I recommend it, if you can find one. Or, it may be time for an upgrade. A socket 370 combo deal using sdram may be your best bet. If you're using pc133 sdram, you will have more choices. Check pricewatch. You may also find an athlon board combo deal with sdram, but they're getting scarce.

 

[DJMiX]

did you flash it with the M6VBE-A
that's the correct bios, according to the bios id string you list...


all you need is to re-flash your old chip to the correct bios or buy a new bios chip...