K7S5A Bios Issues

ragu

Junior Member
Sep 10, 2000
10
0
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Alright, I recently got a K7S5A from a friend when i upgraded my processor to an XP 1900+. I have since been running 2k and decided it was time to do a format, so I placed the bootable CD in the drive and rebooted, to no avail. I tried tons of things and what I finally had to do was make a bootdisk w/ the bios flashing files on it on another computer (Due to the bug in pre-9/01 bioses) and then boot up with it. I started the flash and it looked like it was goind well so I sat down on the couch. The system booted back up and locked 3 lines after initializing the scsi adapter (for some reason this bios does this just before accessing the cmos menu or deciding on the boot device). So I went into the bios, have played with the settings extensively and now I've reached a new problem. After I turned off the machine and rebooted, I now get two high ascii characters seperated by a space(Ï Ï or alt+0207 in System font). It sits here and does nothing regardless of the boot device I select in the menu, so I cant get back in to reflash the bios to an older version. The actual output looks someting like this:

AMD Athlon(tm) Processor,1400Mhz
Checking NVRAM..
524288KB OK

DEL: Setup F8: Boot Menu F12: Network Boot
*Initializes hard Drives*

*Initializes Scsi card w/ cdrom drives*



Ï Ï


My system specs are as follows:
ECS K7S5A running the newest bios (with onboard Lan)
AMD Athlon XP1900+
1x512mb pc133 sdram
Adaptec 2940UW Pro SCSI Card
Plextor/Kenwood SCSI CDROM Drives
4 DMA100 IDE Hard Drives by IBM

I guess my question is.. is there any way to salvage this, or should I just start RMA'ing now?

 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
9,640
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Had that too ... you need to have BIOS 2002/03/25, older BIOSes tend to screw up with certain types
of PCI cards, namely those that bring their own ROM to provide some sort of boot services. Read:
SCSI, IDE, LAN cards w/ boot ROM.

www.ecs.com.tw does not have that BIOS release yet, so you must resort to www.pcchips.com.tw
and get the BIOS for M830 or M830LR (no LAN/onboard LAN respectively). This is the exact same product,
paint job and name badge aside. The BIOS releases are the same too, only difference being the name
and ID strings. And of course PC-Chips webmaster being faster in putting stuff online :)

So when using the AMI flash update tool, you'll see a message like "BIOS tags do not match, old tag K7S5A,
new tag M830LR". Ignore and press the key that makes it continue.

My 830LR would also hang after the SCSI BIOS was done, but ever since I have that BIOS in, all is fine.
(It was sold to me as an "Eaglemax 830LR", but whatever the box says, it's still the same thing :))

regards, Peter
 

Buz2b

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2001
4,619
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Great info from Peter, but if I read your post correctly you are in a position now that you can't flash the BIOS. If that is so, then why not go to BadFlash.com and either order a new BIOS chip or send yours in and have them reprogram it for you. That would seem to be a lot less hassle and take a lot less time than RMAing that board; not to mention that it might be about the same or less than the cost of shipping and insurance for the board to ECS. Just a thought.
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
9,640
1
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Yes he can recover. Do what I did - pull the SCSI card, boot from floppy. All you need to do is prepare a
bootable DOS disk with AMINF.exe and 020325L.ROM on a working system.

regards, Peter