Can I use an ECS bios in a PCChips motherboard??

[alexruiz]

I have a motherboard PCChips M805LR (socket A, KT133, 2 PCI, AMR). I want to upgrade my system to a duron 1.1 GHz (Morgan core).
However, in the pcchips site it doesn' say anything about a new Bios for this motherboard.
I found in the ECS site that the K7VZM is the same configuration. I know sometimes they are the same boards

Can I use the version 3 of the K7VZM bios for the pcchips motherboard???

Any other suggestion to make this Mobo accpet a morgan duron??

Thanks

 

[mboy]

I use an Amptron bios in my PC Chips 817lr board and it works fine.

 

[Peter]

Ain't no such thing as an Amptron BIOS. Amptron usually just patch the sign-on string to say Amptron there,
but their BIOSes are actually plain PC-Chips/ECS.

Whether or not you can use an ECS BIOS in a PC-Chips board or vice versa depends on the model. Many of the older
models didn't get sold under both brands, no alternative here. Some newer ones (741LMRT, 805/K7VZM, 807/K7VZA) use
identical hardware and different BIOSes - these are the interesting ones - and with even newer ones like the
M817/K7AMA even the BIOS is identical.

So mboy, you won nothing actually but alexruiz, you can try the alternate BIOS. Careful though, this board has undergone
a couple of major revisions, make sure you put a matching BIOS on.

regards, Peter

 

[Ziptar]

alexruiz
I have been wondering the same thing.. I think you can use the ECS Rev 1.0 K7VZM on the pcchips m805lr... I haven't tried it yet. I have ordered a Bios Savior (been wanting one anyway...)Now I will be able to play mad scientist with all of my PC's MUUUUHAHAHAHA..... I should have it in a week or so. I will experiment once I get it and post here.

 

[eplebnista]

Here is a link to a PCChips/ECS Bios page(it may be the one you have been accessing). The page is for PCChips(and has been taken out of a frame), but there is an ECS page also. The site isPCWare.com. The date for the last bios listed(listed as 805lmr- but when clicked-shows it as 805lr) is 12-20-00.

hth,
eplebnista

 

[Ziptar]

alexruiz,
My bios savior arrived today. I hooked it up to my M805LR and first burned it with the latest pcchips bios dated 12/12/2000. One that was done I flipped the switch over to the original bios chip and rebooted. I first tried the ECS K7VZM Rev 1.0, 1.0b Bios update V1.2e dated 07/31/2001 It worked like a charm showd K7VZM at bootup and everything... The I flashed it with the K7VZM Revision 3.0 bios update V3.3b dated 09/21/2001. It worked too. I haven't had time to see if the power managemnet issues I was having have been eleviated or if there are any new bios items I can take advantage of... But I can say for sure that the ECS K7VZM bioses WILL work on a PCCHIPS M805LR..

 

[Peter]

You shouldn't be using the BIOS for v3.x boards on the older ones. The BIOS for the later boards might assume new chip revisions and other changes and bug fixes that aren't there on your older board ... this might have subtle negative effects on stability, like when the new BIOS enables chipset features that don't work on older chipset revisions, or make other kinds of settings that don't work on the older board revision ... you get the idea.

Even worse, there might have been peripheral chip changes (sound codec, super-IO, BIOS FlashROM, clock synthesizer) that cause more obvious problems like non-working legacy ports, screwed up sound, all wrong frequencies et al.

Put the latest v1.x BIOS in, this is fairly recent and has been put because many users were requesting not to be forgotten.

regards, Peter