Hot swapping a Bios Chip...

[Snerticus]

I purchased a P4P800 non-deluxe for a friend. 2.4c, 2x512 Crucial PC3200, Abit 5200FX AGP video card, and a pair of WD 40 gig HD's w/ the 8mb buffer. Updated the bios through the instructions offered on ABX, and had no problems, until... I changed, under Performance Mode, from Auto to Standard, and could not boot. No video, Hd drive activity lights up for about 30 seconds, CD lights for about 5 seconds, no beeps... Unplugged power cord, removed battery, and jumpered CLRTC 1. Repeatedly...Tried w/o battery, and jumpered... Did a Google search, and tried -> http://www.amptron.com/documents/Recover.pdf . Nothing. Now I'm thinking how about a hot swap? I have 2 2xP4B266-C's and a P4G8x that have the same bios chip. I loosened the bios chip, and booted to DOS. Removed the chip, taking note of the dimple on the beveled edge. I then substituted the bad chip from the P4P800. From the A prompt, I've tried flashing using Afudos, Asus's 1006.exe. I am seeing
"ASF signature not found"
"BIOS has no flash information available"
Any ideas?
If worse comes to worse, I'll replace his board...

 

[vailr]

You can either have the chip re-programmed, or purchase a replacement from :
www.badflash.com
TYPE Price
Reprogramming any size chip $12.00 per chip
New Chip & Programming 1 or 2 meg chip $19.00 per chip
Blank Chip $10.00 per chip
Shipping
3-5 Day Priority Mail US: $5.30
4-7 Day International Mail: $6.00

Asus USA may also be able to provide a programmed replacement bios chip. (Abit does this for their boards).
Also, did you check for /(parameters) in the DOS flash utility, to "force flash"?:
"a:> awdflash.exe /?"

 

[Snerticus]

[qdid you check for /(parameters) in the DOS flash utility, to "force flash"?:
"a:> awdflash.exe /?"[/quote]

AMI bios on the P4P800...To flash this chip you need to boot to PC-Dos and then have AFUDOS and the bios on another floppy. Insert this floppy and type after the A:\

afudos /iXXX.XXX

If you want it to ignore the new bios files ID then add an N at the end like this.

afudos /ixxx.xxx /n

If you want to to go the full nine yards are reprogram the bootblock, clear cmos and clear NVRAM then these are the switches you will need.

afudos /ixxx.xxx /n /pbnc

From bigtoe's post on ABX Zone...

Tried just about everything I could find...Even Uniflash. No go.

 

[codehack2]

Originally posted by: Snerticus
[qdid you check for /(parameters) in the DOS flash utility, to "force flash"?:
"a:> awdflash.exe /?"

AMI bios on the P4P800...To flash this chip you need to boot to PC-Dos and then have AFUDOS and the bios on another floppy. Insert this floppy and type after the A:\

afudos /iXXX.XXX

If you want it to ignore the new bios files ID then add an N at the end like this.

afudos /ixxx.xxx /n

If you want to to go the full nine yards are reprogram the bootblock, clear cmos and clear NVRAM then these are the switches you will need.

afudos /ixxx.xxx /n /pbnc

From bigtoe's post on ABX Zone...

Tried just about everything I could find...Even Uniflash. No go.[/quote]

That's too bad... Hopefully you can still RMA the board and get a replacement. I'm pretty keen on mobo's with dual bios setup's. As middle of the road as they are on Performance/Overclocking, this has been one of the top selling points for me going with Gigabyte as of lately.

CH2