Any interest/need for pre/re-programmed BIOS chips?

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bobn4burton

Gawd
Joined
Aug 19, 2002
Messages
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Just wondering if anyone is ever interested or needs to have their CMOS chip programmed? I think their used to be a guy on another forum that programmed BIOS chips for people that either had a bad flash or to just buy a backup chip. I don't think he provides this service anymore.

Anyways...maybe there isn't anyone that needs this, but I have an expensive (1200 dollar) IC programmer and can help anyone out if they need it.

So I guess I could re-program a bad flashed part or I could even get a new part and pre-flash it with latest bios if someone wanted a duplicate or something...

Just thought I'd throw this out there in case anyone was in need...
 
Great offer! I don't need this service right now, but its great to know someone that has the ability to do this.
 
problem is that a lot of the latest boards come with a soldered BIOS chip, so re-programming involves sending back the board, not the chip.
 
Hmmm...interesting. I haven't upgraded in a few years (just about to within the next month or so) and I hadn't realized that mobo's have moved towards soldered BIOS chips. Well...maybe there isn't much need then.
 
Do boards still get bricked from a bad BIOS load? I would've thought they solved that problem by now (with dual BIOS chips or something).

I remember my first BIOS modification many years ago. It was a 286 machine and back then all the hard drive sizes were hard-coded into the BIOS and it didn't have support for the 345 MB drive I wanted to use. So I built from scratch an EPROM programmer for my C64 which I then used to reprogram the BIOS. The BIOS was actually interleaved between two EPROM's and what I did was find a drive profile that was "half" right and just had to reprogram one of the chips.

Haha, I remember having to transfer the modified code to the C64 via a 300 baud modem because I had no other way to get the data onto it. I don't remember how long it took but it wasn't fast. I had to do it twice because the first reprogram didn't work as I didn't know there was a checksum at the end that it checked. I also had to manually erase the EPROM's with a de-ionizing light suck into a shoe box. :)
 
I've used Biosman for this type of service, but I appreciate the offer.

problem is that a lot of the latest boards come with a soldered BIOS chip,
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I haven't done an extensive study on this, but I thought this was only true for the budget boards?
 
I know Gigabyte has a backup BIOS and allows you to restore in 3 different ways built into most of their boards: On-board backup, Hard drive, CD (they call it Quad BIOS).

Asus has a way for you to recover by loading a BIOS off a CD or flash drive called CrashFree BIOS when it detects a bad block.

Not sure about other manufacturers, so there may be of some use for the service.
 
My p5k-prem has an spi header for flashing using a programmer,i'm sure other modern boards must have them.
 
Blackforge said:
I know Gigabyte has a backup BIOS and allows you to restore in 3 different ways built into most of their boards: On-board backup, Hard drive, CD (they call it Quad BIOS).

Asus has a way for you to recover by loading a BIOS off a CD or flash drive called CrashFree BIOS when it detects a bad block.
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& unfortunately neither is foolproof as you can see from reading forums on the internet where people are having to RMA whole mobos rather than simply swapping chips.

abit & DFI at least still use socketed BIOS chips.
 
TI66ER said:
My p5k-prem has an spi header for flashing using a programmer,i'm sure other modern boards must have them.
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Hmm, is this a common thing for Asus boards? My Blitz Formula is freshly bricked. Because of my casemods, though, the BIOS chip and its environs are hidden from view. Anyone know if the Blitz Formula does or does not have an SPI header?
 
Flash BIOS was introduced years ago to get rid of the need to program EPROMs with BIOS. I wouldn't want to go backwards.
 
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