Did you screw up a bios flash ? Board dead ? Can't hot swap ?

[Modelworks]

I see more and more people with dead boards after bios flashing. With the newer boards they are using SPI flash. The advantage for them is its cheap and only has usually 6-8 pins. Bad for us is that you can't just swap like before .

Here is a site that has a program and the schematics to reprogram a dead board. I've used it a couple time with the gigabyte boards and it works well. It is very cheap to build as well.

http://www.retroleum.co.uk/spilep.html

build the circuit, de-solder the bios chip, connect it to the circuit and run the flasher under dos. Then solder back the bios chip. Has worked for me every time first try.

 

[bendixG15]

piece of cake :thumbsup: ..

 

[Zap]

Heh, I also have a Gigabyte board that is dead from a BIOS flash (using the flash util built into the BIOS, no less). I'll have to look into this.

 

[SunnyD]

Wiring it to something like one of these and then clipping it to the chip on the dead mobo would be quite a bit easier...

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Wiring it to something like one of these and then clipping it to the chip on the dead mobo would be quite a bit easier...

Won't work.
Already went down that road.
There is no way to power the chip on the motherboard without also powering everything else that is connected to the 3.3V line in the area. That causes other circuitry to become active and changes the voltages on the other pins making it impossible to program the chip.

You could use a clip and disconnect the 3.3V from the spi chip, but then you might as well just remove the chip.