Modelworks
Lifer
I really didn't take notice of how many motherboards now are coming with bios chips soldered to the board until I had a problem last week.
Then I did lots of google searches to try to find solutions for my problem and found lots of others who were bitten by the socket-less bios chips.
Why companies are doing this I have no idea.
Is it to save .33 from the socket cost ?
The result is that its causing lots of headaches for end users.
You no longer can buy a spare chip or hot swap , you have to replace the entire board.
Yes, you can still unsolder the chip yourself and replace it, but thats not an easy task without the right tools. 32 pin chips are a pain to remove and replace.
Other companies are trying to switch to a newer form of bios chip called spi.
Spi is great for manufacturers because it only requires 4 pins to 'talk' to the chip.
Its bad for end users because again if the bios fails your out of luck.
The other issue is that some companies are changing bios so that the boot block no longer works like it did. Before you could use a floppy to restore the bios. Now I see lots of postings where the floppy is not even checked anymore. Curiosity got the best of me so I started loading up those bios in a disassembler to see wth is going on.
In 90% them the code for floppy is partially there, but the jump to the code for the floppy is edited as not to seek it anymore. Seems code space is tight so thats what was chosen to make room. This is only a guess as I can't understand any other reason not to leave that code in there.
They have tried to do things like dual bios, which doesn't work all the time.
Also things that are extremely misleading like virtual dual bios, which supposedly puts a copy of the bios on the HD in a 'hidden' area, doesn't work 99% of the time.
Finally the last thing is the bundled windows flash bios programs.
These are the #1 cause of bios flashes going wrong.
And yet they continue to tell people to use them.
They are also enabling flashing of the boot block every time a user flashes.
Thats a very bad idea since it almost guarantees that the motherboard will be dead if a bad flash occurs. In the old days we never ever flashed the boot block unless it was absolutely necessary.
The solution is simple.
Stop screwing with something that worked fine for years.
Put the bios chips back in sockets, and restore the boot blocks to their former usefulness.
I am emailing all the manufacturers to tell them of my disaproval of the way things are going , maybe it will help if more do the same .
Then I did lots of google searches to try to find solutions for my problem and found lots of others who were bitten by the socket-less bios chips.
Why companies are doing this I have no idea.
Is it to save .33 from the socket cost ?
The result is that its causing lots of headaches for end users.
You no longer can buy a spare chip or hot swap , you have to replace the entire board.
Yes, you can still unsolder the chip yourself and replace it, but thats not an easy task without the right tools. 32 pin chips are a pain to remove and replace.
Other companies are trying to switch to a newer form of bios chip called spi.
Spi is great for manufacturers because it only requires 4 pins to 'talk' to the chip.
Its bad for end users because again if the bios fails your out of luck.
The other issue is that some companies are changing bios so that the boot block no longer works like it did. Before you could use a floppy to restore the bios. Now I see lots of postings where the floppy is not even checked anymore. Curiosity got the best of me so I started loading up those bios in a disassembler to see wth is going on.
In 90% them the code for floppy is partially there, but the jump to the code for the floppy is edited as not to seek it anymore. Seems code space is tight so thats what was chosen to make room. This is only a guess as I can't understand any other reason not to leave that code in there.
They have tried to do things like dual bios, which doesn't work all the time.
Also things that are extremely misleading like virtual dual bios, which supposedly puts a copy of the bios on the HD in a 'hidden' area, doesn't work 99% of the time.
Finally the last thing is the bundled windows flash bios programs.
These are the #1 cause of bios flashes going wrong.
And yet they continue to tell people to use them.
They are also enabling flashing of the boot block every time a user flashes.
Thats a very bad idea since it almost guarantees that the motherboard will be dead if a bad flash occurs. In the old days we never ever flashed the boot block unless it was absolutely necessary.
The solution is simple.
Stop screwing with something that worked fine for years.
Put the bios chips back in sockets, and restore the boot blocks to their former usefulness.
I am emailing all the manufacturers to tell them of my disaproval of the way things are going , maybe it will help if more do the same .
