Need HELP! with my Chaintech VNF3-250 socket 754 board

[douglasb]

My VNF3-250 is currently in need of a BIOS flash, as I had a power outage while flashing the BIOS. The board is 100% operable, it just needs a BIOS, and I don't have the "Recovery Disc" utilities any more. I am still waiting to hear back from Chaintech, and I hear they are slow to respond to support inqueries, so if anybody out there has this disc and the recovery utilities (AWDFLASH.EXE and the ".BIN" binary BIOS file), please let me know so I can arrange a way to obtain them. If necessary, I will gladly pay media and shipping costs for a backup CD of these utilities, plus I will leave a positive Heatware evaluation for my purchase/freebie/whatever.

BIOS is a Phoenix chip, but flash utility is from Award. I can get a display from the board, it tries to flash the BIOS, but if I use any version of AWDFLASH.EXE v7.75 or newer, I get the error "Program's BIOS-Lock String does not match with your system!" Any version earlier than v7.75 and I get an "Unknown Flash Type" error message. I have tried all 6 BIOSes available on Chaintech's website, and this happens with all of them, so I'm guessing I need a special version of AWDFLASH.EXE or a BIOS that isn't up on Chaintech's site. If anybody has any experience with this board and fixing a bad BIOS flash, PLEASE PM me with advice, because I can't find an answer or the proper utilities anywhere on the Internet (not Usenet/Newsgroups, not WWW, not P2P, nothing has been any help to me yet).

 

[DJMiX]

IF after you attempt bios recovery and it doesn't work.

You can either buy a new chip or get your existing bios chip reflash.

 

[douglasb]

Originally posted by: DJMiX
IF after you attempt bios recovery and it doesn't work.

You can either buy a new chip or get your existing bios chip reflash.

I know, but that costs around $20 from what I've seen, and I might as well just get another board if I'm going to pay that much for something I could easily do myself, if only I had the right files or someone willing to hotflash it for me. Thanks for the suggestion, though. Trust me, I already looked into that. If you know of a retail service that does it for much cheaper, or someone willing to do it for me (maybe someone with a BIOS Savior and a spare chip to trade for mine, then reflash it), then I'd love to hear about it, but I can't pay $20 + shipping both ways to fix a board I'm trying to sell for $35 shipped