Blank Bios chip -- please read!!!

[ctk1981]

Well I finally came across enough money to buy me up to IBM 60GB 60GXP hard drives. Bought me some nice rounded cables to get them all squared away. Anyways, this is my first time setting up raid. I set it up under a 64K stripe...would this be advisable? Its already setup, but Id like to know in case I ever do change it over or have to reformat.

Also, under Sisoft Disk drive test...which number do most people concern themselves with? I know sisoft is a poor test for doing Raid, but Im just curious. Before I scored below a raid 66 outfit. Then I installed the latency patch and scored just above a Raid 100 40GB. Buffered read is 95MB, is that the number I should be concerned with if im doing good or not?


Now back to the Abit Board. I just wanted to give my praise here. This board has been rock solid for me ever since I got it. Im still learning all its features and tweaks, but so far its been great. An interesting I have noticed is the fact when you change something in the bios...it actually has an impact on things (compared to my MSI board, change something nothing happens). For one, AGP aperture size. Before on my MSI it didnt matter what you had it set at, you got the same general score for 3Dmark 2001. On my abit board, 64MB and 128MB yielded rather poor scores for me. After figuring out what was going on, I boosted it up to 256Mb and what do you know..my best score on 3Dmark 2001 ever...8501. Seems like performance has really increased since I boosted it up, dont feel so bad about turning up all the eyecandy and smoothvision..very playable.

Well anyways...enough ranting and asking. Just wanted to point out some things Ive noticed with my new board. Hopefully my new bios chip gets here so I can slap it in and actually flash up to the new bios from Abit. Has anyone else had a half damaged bios chip? In where you cant actually flash up to a new bios, yet the computer still works? Weird I thought.

 

[ctk1981]

Bump and now another question.



I got my bios chip today from abit...popped it in the computer, went to start it up and nothing. I know I didnt put it in backwards, im familiar with the awful smell. The cdrom clicks over, hard drives, start to initilize, etc. But the speaker never beeps and it never starts the post. Did they send me a blank bios chip?!? I cleared the cmos also, no help there.

Thanks in advance

 

[ctk1981]

bump -- anyone? any ideas on this one? Im really thinking it was a blank bios chip. the old one had a sticker on it with phoenix bios version blah blah...the new one has no sticker at all.

 

[gerrick]

never heard of that happening. Guess you can't flash it since it won't boot. put the old one back in and test again.

 

[ctk1981]

Funny you should mention that...I am posting this from the computer right now. Reinstalled the old bios chip. Booted right up, still have the unknown flash problem but the darn thing still runs. Like I said before, Blank new bios chip potentially?

 

[jackwhitter]

ok, what you can do is a hot flash.. i will warn you now, be careful though.

pop in the old chip loosely so you can easily remove it. boot up the board and let it post, and then let it run to the boot up disk. just b4 you flash the bios, insert the possibly blank chip, and flash away.

reboot and if it is a good bios chip, then the new flash should make it work. good luck. i've done this once before and it worked fine.

 

[ctk1981]

interesting...may try it. Or wait for another bios chip from abit...like I said, its half damaged now. It still runs, just no upgrading for now. Thanks for the tip though

 

[ctk1981]

Well today I got desperate and tried a hot flash. No going though, just says unknown flash after I inserted the new one. Really weird.


Also think I had a memory chip fail or something....system was only registering 665XXX KB of ram...I have 768XXX. Couldnt make it boot to windows either. So I uninstalled the two crucial sticks, posts correct amount of ram and makes it to windows. Im having some really weird problems with this board!! Im not sure what to do now, may end up sending this board out to abit for a new one.