Need a little help 'Hot Flashing' a BIOS *** UPDATED ***

[schdaddy]

I flashed my friends Abit BX6 R2 not to long ago, needless to say things didn't go as planned! So I did some reading about hot flashing here.
It just so happens that I have an old Asus P5A still running that has an Award BIOS also.

So I booted the system up to a floppy, ran AWDFLASH, pulled the working Asus BIOS, put in my friends Abit BIOS and tried to flash it with that lastest revision of BX6R2 BIOS. Well the system accesses the floppy acting like its goin' flash, then it just locks with the floppy light on

Same results if I pull the working Asus BIOS, put in the Abit, then run AWDFLASH

anybody have a clue as to why the system locks?

any help would be great!
thankx
chris

 

[schdaddy]

gotta be someone here thats done this before... right?

even another link or some kinda resource would be nice

 

[eagleye]

Each motherborad has its own bios written for it, and it only.
Just because it is an Award bios doesn't mean you can install it into any motherboard. You need to go to the board manufactures web site and down load the bios for that particular board.

Gary

 

[schdaddy]

I know that each board has an unique BIOS written for it
What I'm doing is booting with the Asus BIOS
pulling it out & putting in the Abit BIOS
then flashing it with the Abit BIOS for that chip

read the link on the original POST & you can see that this guy did the same thing I'm attempting

I just don't understand why the system locks?

I also read somewhere else about shadowing in the BIOS would help
didn't really understand, so I just enable every shadowing feature, still locks!?!?!

this is driving me insane, & I'm to cheap/broke to buy a new BIOS

 

[rkoenn]

I have done this, just recently as well. It sounds like both of your BIOS are Award? My experience so far has shown they have to be the same brand as a minimum. The flash program will see that they aren't and stop there if so. Next, I believe the motherboard socket support must support the size chip you are using. i.e.: If your socket is wired for a 128K EPROM and you put in a 512K it won't work. The one I did just recently had a 128K in it, a very old PC Chips board with an AMI BIOS, and I was actually able to flash a 128K from a much newer board in it and also a 256K EPROM from another type motherboard with it. I believe you are doing the basics OK. Shadow the BIOS code in the BIOS setup options. I also attempted to flash these AMI BIOSs in an Award BIOS machine and got the lockup you mentioned. That's about the only help I can give. It can be done but you may be up against a different chip size problem. I know if you could find someone with the same motherboard you could do it.

 

[Beater]

Ok I don't know if you have tried this or not but Award bios has an area of the bios which can't be wiped out. Problem is you can only access this area by using an ISA vid card if your mobo is PCI video, or by using a PCI video card if your mobo is AGP video. Once the video card is installed you reboot your system there should be an A prompt. From the A prompt you can install the proper Award flash bios exe. from the floppy. I know this sounds complicated but it worked for me and I hope I am not forgetting all the steps but it was a long time ago that I did it. There is a link somewhere with all the steps. Just do a search under bios recovery and you should find it. There is a company that sells bios chips for boards pre flashed but they are ridiculously expensive. Hope this helps.

 

[schdaddy]

thankx rkoenn & beater
both of you informed me on something I didn't know

I'm going to check the chip size & I might have an old ISA VC collecting dust (I knew I would find a use for it someday thats why I kept it)

thankx again

 

[DaddyG]

Schdaddy, the BIOS BOOT Block might help with the original BIOS in the original mobo. It depends how bad the original flash was. There's a pretty generic flash utility thats not so picky about what it flashes. Can't remeber the name but if you go to BADFLASH.com, they have links to some BIOS sites and one of them has the utility.

 

[Tummy]

Hey I've done this before and had the same problem as you, dude. What I've noticed and things to check :

1) after you swap the bios chips, load awdflash on it's on first... it will show the type of BIOS chip that's plugged in and if it detects okay, it should be okay here.
2) when you enter the name of the BIOS file, in my case, each and everytime I had problems reading the disk (ie the bios file started to read and then just stopped) believe it or not, it turned out to be a bad copy of the bios file on the floppy. Happened about 3 or 4 times to me now, too. Try a different floppy disk, reformat it (no quick format), expand the bios file and try again...

who knows..? good luck.

 

[rkoenn]

Just a funny on flashing I experienced today. I was attempting to flash a PC Chips BIOS and booted into total safe mode from the HDD. I then logged onto the floppy which had the flash program and the BIOS code on it. Tried to run the flash from the floppy and the flash program would run but when it tried to load the flash code it would come back with a message that the code couldn't be found or some such message. Tried 3 times with the same results. Finally decided to try something a little different. I copied the flash program and code onto a temp directory on the HDD. It copies both with no problems. Ran the flash from there and it read the code with no problems. Proceeded to do that flash and it worked fine. Don't know why this is, other than I started the system from the HDD and tried to run the flash program from the floppy. Never did try to boot from the floppy, which was bootable, and run it from there but who cares, I finally got it to work anyway. By the way, it was an AMI BIOS and flash program.

 

[schdaddy]

well after trying the ISA video card & various other things people suggested I was still unable to get system from locking

so my friend bought another Abit BX6R2 off eGay
let me just say that it was scary how easy it was to hot flash both BIOS after that

tomorrow they will be another BX6R2 on eGay

thankx everyone for the help