. HELP!!! Did I fry my Pro2-A mb or just the bios?

[aNtHrAx323]

My GOD, someone else HAS had this problem! I have posted dozens of times about this, and haven't gotten a solution yet. But, in my case, when it tries to boot from the floppy (any drive I connect, and I ensure they are connected properly and plugged in), I get the error "Floppy A error. System halt" followed by endless beeping. Oh, and my LEDs are red green red red as well. I've tried different video cards in different slots, but nothing helps. The floppy drive DID work until this happened, and I've tried others, which had no effects.

 

[Pyramix]

TGirl, you can just call up MSI and they will send you a new BIOS chip for free. I just did that today. The problem for me is removing the old BIOS chip from the socket that it is in, on the MSI K7TPro2-A mobo. Look at my thread about removing the BIOS chip: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=337133

Here's my original thread about the problem with the mobo:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=319439

Good luck. And let me know if you figure out a way to remove the BIOS chip from the socket.

Pyramix

 

[Pyramix]

anthrax, if you had changed your name to anthraxgirl you would have gotten several replies about your posts j/k

Pyramix

 

[kw3i]

yes the way to fix this is you need to fill your bath tub up with water, then completely submerge your mobo in the water. this will clean the mobo of any impurities it may have and thus fixing your problem. also if your having problems with any other components throw them in there too for good measure. a good bath is also the best way to defrag a heavily used hard drive. if this doesnt work then i would say try it again, better safe then sorry.

 

[tjdavis1138]

I would have been happier than heck if my motherboard would have put anything on the screen.

 

[JHalpin]

Pyramix

I got an extraction tool from Radio Shack that was perfect.

PLCC Extraction Tool
Part # 276-2101
$9.99


Popped that sucker right out. Wish I knew MSI would send me a bios chip free before I spent $23.00 at Badflash...

That's what I get for rushing things... again....

 

[aNtHrAx323]

I went ahead and ordered a new chip from badflash.com... I would have asked MSI for one, but I have called and e-mailed them since Sunday morning about this and haven't gotten a response. Seeing I need the system working by Friday, I had to buy one. I'll go ahead and request one from MSI for good measure. But how do I fix this floppy error?!

 

[TGirl]

Pyramix, aren't we funny!! I tried calling msi about 15 times and left messages. Their support SUCKS!!!! I was so freaked out and all I get is a stupid recording. What kind of tech support is that? I even left a dire message to no avail. I'm going to go ahead and ask for my free chip thru e-mail. Why not. I'll have a square to spare.

Here is what Jack Rowland from Badflash e-mailed me:


"Be sure to put the chip in the proper direction. Get it backwards and the
chip is a gonner.

See http://www.badflash.com/removbio.htm and
http://www.badflash.com/wrapup.htm for removal and replacement instructions.

Be sure to discharge you CMOS before you boot up too.

Some bios files require a 3 pin fan plugged into the header near the CPU or
they won't boot up. You will need to check with your board maker to see."


Ok, what does he mean by "discharge your cmos"? Does he mean remove the battery? Do we need a 3 pin fan? I don't remember one. I think he's just covering all the bases.

Thought this info would help you guys out as well.

TGirl

 

[Pyramix]

anthrax, here's the key to getting through to MSI. When you call them up, they say press 1 for customer service, 2 for technical support, blah, blah, blah, and just hold on if you have a rotary phone. Aha! That's what you do. Pretend you have a rotary phone, and you get a live operator

I have been trying to get in touch with them for a week and a half now. I never got any response. Finally, today I tried that rotary phone thing this time, and voila! MSI said they will mail the BIOS chip today itself and that it should be here before the weekend

Pyramix

 

[Pyramix]

tgirl, I guess your answer about getting through to msi has been answered. I think by discharging the CMOS, he means "clearing the CMOS." That is rather simple to do. Look at the motherboard manual if you are not sure how to do that. The 3-pin fan that he is talking about is the HSF unit connector. Don't worry about that. I don't think our BIOS checks for that. However, I am assuming you already have a HSF unit on top of your Athlon. Your Athlon will fry if you don't have one (but you already knew that).

Pyramix

 

[aNtHrAx323]

Whoa, that soon?!

 

[JHalpin]

TGirl

Don't worry about the fan header. Discharging the cmos is just clearing it with a jumper. It's right near the bios chip and there's a picture in the manual. I think it's labeled JBAT but I'm not looking at it right now. Normally it connects the top and middle prongs. Change it to connect the middle and lower prongs for about ten seconds and then return it to the way it was connecting the top and middle prongs. By the way, I'm speaking as if the motherboard was vertical and oriented with the CPU near the "top" of the board. Hope that helped....

 

[TGirl]

I already reset the jumpers to see if it would help to reboot - no. But thanks for the advise, I had to call a friend and my mb manual for instructions.

I have two odd questions. I have an Elsa Gladiac agp card. When I installed the nvidia drivers off the MSI cdrom it now says that it is an MSI Star*** something or other. It appears as if it is now MSI's version of the same GEForce 2 card? It has a much better interface, although I don't even know what most of the settings are for? There is no mention of Elsa Gladiac except at very beginning of boot before Windows loads? Should I put the Elsa Drivers back on? I am doublebooting 98 and 2000Pro. In 2000, my video card shows up as a PCI instead of AGP in Device Manager? What's up with this? Anyone have this happen, either case?

Also, Windows 2000 locks up all the time and I must reboot system. This is the main reason I was trying to update the bios in the firstplace hoping it would help with whatever is causing this.

Thanks everyone,

TGirl

 

[Pyramix]

Wait a minute. TGirl, are you telling me your system boots? Although you didn't say it, I am assuming this GeForce is on some other system. If it is on the one that does not boot, are you saying these problems existed before the BIOS got corrupted?

I don't know why you'd wanna use MSI's drivers on an Elsa card. But so long as it does not give you any problems, stick with it. If none of them give you problems, go with the ones that give better performance. If the performance is similar too, go with the Elsa drivers.

Try switching to the Elsa drivers and see if that solves the problem of the video card being recognized as a PCI card under win2k.

Pyramix

 

[Michele1]

Hi, I have a pro 2A and I'm using a Duron 750Mhz with a 128Mb pc-133 SDram and Asus V7100 video card. I've hooked-up my Quantum 20.5Gb AS(7200 RPM ATA100) and my LG 52X CD-Rom in parallel on the primary IDE connector (blue connector) and the BIOS doesn't detect either one but if I disconnect one them off the U-ata ribbon cable then the one that's left connected is detected by the BIOS. Same thing happens if I connect the cable on the secondary IDE. I've upgrated to BIOS V2.2 succesfully.

Does anyone have any suggestions..???

Thanks!

Michele

 

[JHalpin]

Michele1

I don't have a really have a solution for you if you really need to have them both on the same channel for some reason, just the comment that you probably really don't want to do that. When you hook up 2 disks with different speeds(ie UDMA 33/66/100 or CDROM) the entire channel gets slowed down to the speed of the slowest device. So, my suggestion is Hard Drive on primary channel and cdrom on secondary. Get another cable if you need it.

 

[Michele1]

Thanks JHalpin!!
I Thinks I'm gonna to just that. I guess anything I will have to connect as a slave drive on my primary channel will have to be ATA-100. I hope it will work.

Thanks again,

Michele

 

[TGirl]

Pyramix, I meant that before I fried my bios, My Gladiac card was showing as an Elsa Card. Should have clarified that. W2000 only sees my video card as a PCI with either driver. Just thought that was strange. See, I didn't know exactly what that nvidia driver was for, just assumed it meant if you have an nvidia based card I needed it. Still not really sure.

Also, when you update the 4 in 1 via drivers, where is that info held? In the bios or under each Operating System? I didn't even realize chipsets needed their own drivers! I updated them in both my os - 98 and 2000? Did I do the right thing?

Michelle1,

I have an IBM 7200 rpm 100ATA Hard Drive. I have tried it with another hard drive as a slave, the cdrom as a slave, both seperately without problems. The only problem I had was with my Zip drive. Windows kept thinking this was a hard drive. I thought my IBM was corrupted or something. Windows kept trying to format it when I was installing the operating system? Just took that sucker out! Problems solved. Put it in another computer. Now, I didn't have time to check out the hd speeds before I fried the bios, so I don't know if having ata100 and the 33cdrom slowed the hard drive down. But it did work fine.

TGirl

 

[JHalpin]

Used the "Pyramix" method (see above) to contact MSI today and got a call back within an hour. No muss, no fuss. Larry the Tech simply said give me a mailing address and I'll 2-Day it to you. Seemed like he's been hearing about this a lot lately... By the way, he did say we should be able to recover with a floppy but for some reason this method was not working with the Pro2A. The telephone number for MSI is on the website.

 

[aNtHrAx323]

Ah, ok. I assume the reason the boot block is not working is because they simply used the boot block from the Pro2, which used the 686A south bridge. The Pro2-A uses the 686B controller, which obviously an updated IDE controller, and probably has an updated floppy controller. Had they updated it to work with the new controller, we probably would not be having these problems.

 

[JHalpin]

Bump for Seek

 

[seek]

WOW!!!

I posted a message about this same thing a little earlier...but it's amazing how many people had this problem

For me, it was that I accidently double-clicked when I shouldn't have and flashed the from win, it froze and I get blank screen, led pattern, beep code on reboot. Did I mention I have a k7t pro2 original and the floppy doesn't seek on it either. This sounds wonderful what MSI is doing! I can't wait to call them up later, during business hours. I must, even though I'm still horrified about what I did to my comp, and I have to go without it for a couple of days, I really salute MSI for looking out for the clumsyness of their users, at a great cost to them. That's the way all companies should be.