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Hot swap bios

S

Shezan

n00b
Joined
Mar 26, 2004
Messages
13
Need help with hot swapping my bios chip
I tried to flash my system with this supposedly proper bios revision for my board from ZDNET. It said it was good but when i restarted the screen doesn't go on, and it doesn't do any of the boot block recover stuff. So my last bet is to reflash the bios by doing a hot swap technique.

My question is, my system is an amptron pentium 4 mobo, using a DIP AMI Bios chip, but my friend is letting me use his Pentium 133 to do the bios flash on. His system however runs a Award Bios chip. Will it still let me flash my chip when i stick it in there?
 
Nope, the two BIOSes aren't even the same, and probably won't even be the same socket type. I'm not sure why you'd even try a BIOS from anywhere but the board's website. Have you cleared the CMOS and then tried to boot again?
 
I got desperate. I bought a 9800 radeon and my board wouldn't support it. The latest bios on the website was from 2002, and ZDNET seemed like a trusted place to download the 2003 revision from, sadly I was wrong.

I left the CMOS reseted for freakin like 2 days and still nothing.

The socket types are the same, same 32-pin DIP, just not AMI :(
 
does the floppy drive still seek when the PC starts?

If so, there is a way to make a floppy that will automatically reflash the BIOS, but the floppy still needs to work.
 
http://www.ioss.com.tw/eg/


i recomend one of these

and i tryed hot swapping once we ended up with 2 ruined bios the solution that worked was my friend who did the bad flash paied like 15 bucks for a new bios chip
 
if a flash goes wrong, thers nothing to do about it, ur out a mobo, u must have used the wrong flash utility
 
Originally posted by hellzassasin
if a flash goes wrong, thers nothing to do about it, ur out a mobo, u must have used the wrong flash utility
Click to expand...

Yeah, my advice would be to not listen to this guy.

First off, at worst you can almost certainly order a replacement BIOS, either from your motherboard company or a third party. It'll probably cost you 15-20$. Not so bad.

If you want to go the hot-swap route, the best way to do it (by far) is with a same-model motherboard. Trying it with a different model motherboard may work, but you'd want them to be of the same brand and use the same sized BIOS chips (not just sockets, but chips come in different data sizes)

The more different the motherboards are when doing a hot-swap BIOS flash, the more likely for something to go wrong.

But as long as you're careful with the BIOS chip in the P-133, it's unlikely that you'll ruin that machine --so looking at it that way, you're not going to lose much by trying, right? Needle-nosed pliers and a steady hand --if you've got both, you shouldn't really run into problems.

Erik
 
You cannot do a "hot flash" of the BIOS with the setup you are wanting to use. You must have the exact same motherboards to try and do a hot swap. Even then you may not like the results. I tried to do a hot flash one time and fried the board I was using to do it with. Luckily, my friend and I both had spare motherboards so we weren't without computers during the RMA process.

Your best bet is to try what Met-AL suggested for a cheap way to fix the board.
 
Originally posted by Dem

But as long as you're careful with the BIOS chip in the P-133, it's unlikely that you'll ruin that machine --so looking at it that way, you're not going to lose much by trying, right? Needle-nosed pliers and a steady hand --if you've got both, you shouldn't really run into problems.

Erik
Click to expand...
there's no way he is flashing the BIOS for a P4 motherboard in a P133 machine. Even if it doesn't wreck the P133, it has exactly a 0% chance of working.

even IF the chips are even the same size/pincount, he'll boot into the flash utility, swap out the chips, and the flash utility will say "what are you doing Dave? this is a P133 board.."
 
Nope, my bios didn't seem to have the boot block, cus it didn't seek the floppy drive. That's why i wanted a hot swap.

However, my uncle's comp store turned out to have an Amptron mobo with the same chipsets and same bios distribution, just diff model. I tried his bios chip in mine. I didn't want to keep his chip of course so i hot swapped with my mobo (no use killing his mobo right?), and it worked flawlessly. Thanks to all those that gave advice on what to do. Appreciate it :D.

- Shezan
 
Well nice it turned out fine :)

But about the bootblock thing, to get that working or even finding out if it have one, you have to unplug everything, rip everything out, only one ramstick, keyboard and floppy and do it blindfolded, some boards insist to have a vidcard in, then use a PCI vidcard, not AGP, thats how i rescued a mobo once using the bootblock.
 
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