I'm a crazy mofo! :)

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sharkeeper

Lifer
Jan 13, 2001
10,886
2
0
Well, we all knew that...

[NOTE: This is NOT an April Fool Joke! This happened about ten minutes ago!]

I accidentally flashed an ASUS A7V133 with a wrong BIOS. (Promise Ultra 100 instead of Fastrak100)

I knew this wasn't looking too good after I get HARDWARE MONITOR HAS FOUND AN ERROR, and I go into BIOS and see the CPU CORE is 0.04 volts! :Q

When booting, it freezes at the Promise screen saying a Chip isn't found, BIOS not installed. No way around it. Can't even get to the floppy!

Rather than throw away the motherboard, (RMA or NEW BIOS takes too long!) I thought I would try something a little far fetched.

My wife's current system is a P3 700 (no o/c) on an Asus P3BF. I took the cover off (Damn Asus put the BIOS chip all the way under the PCI slots! :|) and said to myself "Gee, that chip will work!"

I pulled the chip off the A7V133 and pulled the chip off the P3BF but put it back but real easy so it would be a snap to pull off with the machine running. I downloaded the CORRECT BIOS for the A7V133 and the aflash program and copy both to a TEMP folder on the C: drive. Boot up from a clean floppy, go to the C: drive and pulled out the P3BF BIOS and plug in the A7V133 BIOS. I looked at the screen. Still a C:\TEMP prompt!

I ran the flash program and it immediately recognised the BIOS chip from the other mobo! I flashed it and ignored the error message. (the BIOSes were obviously different!)

It finished saying the BIOS was successfully flashed. I put the chip back in the A7V133 and it booted right up like there's no tomorrow! :)

It worked alright, but a lot of people would think that's crazy! Next time, I'll flash it within windows! :D

Cheers!
 
R

Remnant2

Senior member
Dec 31, 1999
567
0
0
A hotswap while the computer is running of the BIOS? heh. Well, I guess if it worked. ;)
 
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SandipT

Junior Member
Dec 17, 2000
10
0
0
yeah did the same thing last year with my asum k7m...dead pc till i hot bios flashed in another pc with same bios brand (happened to be a cyrix 200)
 
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Homer

Senior member
Oct 9, 1999
686
0
0
Sharkeeper, part of me is impressed by your ingenuity and balls, another part of me is really, really bothered knowing your day job is minding nukes...
 
MichaelD

MichaelD

Lifer
Jan 16, 2001
31,528
3
76
Homer: LOL!

Shark: How can I say this...boy, did you pull a rabbit out of the hat! If I would've tried that, first I would have (somehow) electocuted myself, then, a lot of black smoke would come off the mobo, then, all the lights in the house would go out, then....bad things would happen then. "I am not worthy to stand in the presence of one so great....and so lucky!"

 
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sharkeeper

Lifer
Jan 13, 2001
10,886
2
0
Homer: You'd be surprised!

Yes, it worked well! Just another excuse to keep an elcheapo system around! :)

Cheers!
 
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sharkeeper

Lifer
Jan 13, 2001
10,886
2
0
I have the mobo/cpu/ram sitting on the desk ready to install in the box. I will load the OS (2000) tonight and make a Ghost image.

She's getting upgraded from a P3 700 with 384 MB PC 100 to an Athlon 1.2 GHz with 512 MB CAS2 PC 133. Replacing a 18 GB IBM 22GXP with a WDC 400BBRTL.

Cheers!
 
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Killbat

Diamond Member
Jan 9, 2000
6,641
1
0
If you think about it, it's perfectly sensible that the machine wouldn't care about the BIOS ROM being present after POST, provided it's set up to shadow the BIOS code.
 
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Soccerman

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,378
0
0
yeah, the problem I would wonder about is, there should still be power going to the BIOS chip when you swapped chips, so the potential is for damaging it through electricity..

I personally would have been worried about whether or not the P3 would still worked, I probably wouldn't try that..
 
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crazychicken

Platinum Member
Jan 20, 2001
2,081
0
0
i took apart my psu and then touched it w/ a screwdriver... HIGHLY not suggested!!! ever since then i am afraid to touch stuff when it is on, not only for my sake, but to save the components
how does that even work, isn't it theoreticly impossible?
lmk cause this sounds like a trick to keep in my bag ;)
david
 
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sharkeeper

Lifer
Jan 13, 2001
10,886
2
0


<< yeah, the problem I would wonder about is, there should still be power going to the BIOS chip when you swapped chips, so the potential is for damaging it through electricity.. >>



Electrically, there is no difference unplugging and plugging a DIP object as when compared to powering the parent device on or off. I'd highly recommend holding the object as parallel as possible to the DIP socket to avoid undesirable anomalies! :)




<<
i took apart my psu and then touched it w/ a screwdriver... HIGHLY not suggested!!! ever since then i am afraid to touch stuff when it is on, not only for my sake, but to save the components >>



LOL, experience is THE best teacher, bar none! Unfortunately its tuition can be astronomical! :)

Cheers!
 
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