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Could this command have bricked my BIOS?

R

rthorntn

Junior Member
Hi,

Please help, I have a Zotac Z77-ITX board and was trying to get my Sapphire Nitro RX480 to work (blank screen when graphics card installed) so tried updating the BIOS.

I ran "afu303 a2290426.bin" from a FreeDOS bootable USB and I think this has bricked my motherboard, is this even possible, on reading the instructions (after the fact) I should have done "afu303 a2290426.bin /p /n /b /r"?

The LED display just shows "d0" and I get a blank screen and no BIOS (RX480 removed).

Also is there anyway to recover, short of replacing the BIOS DIP8 chip or using a BusPirate to write a new BIOS? I tried renaming the BIOS to AMIBOOT.ROM on a USB and restarting the system quite a few times holding CTRL-HOME or just HOME, nothing.

Thanks.

Richard
 
Afu303/afudos looks like a BIOS flash utility, so yeah flashing a bios incorrectly/with the wrong BIOS can most certainly brick it.

Does that board have a bios flipper switch (to go from BIOS A to B)? If not, you're probably boned.
 
The old DIP switch boards you'd think are dinosaurs.

That leaves two possibilities for the present: a soldered BIOS chip -- meaning "no hope;" and a socketed, removable BIOS PLCC chip, which provides an easy fix.

If you have the latter, just spend the $10 or $20 once you locate either an independent who custom-flashes chips per the motherboard spec and part, or the board maker provides them as an "accessory."
 
BonzaiDuck said:
The old DIP switch boards you'd think are dinosaurs.
Click to expand...

There's a bunch of modern boards (specifically higher end) which have dipswitches for BIOS versions. Basically lets you have an 'a' side for bios flash testing, massive overclocking (that might make your system unbootable/unable to get into bios to change stuff), or whatever, then a 'b' side which is safe to leave at an old version or something that lets you reflash the other side to stock. I have one on my asrock 1151 board.
 
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