Kinda an odd question...

S

starhawk

[H]F Junkie
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Oct 4, 2004
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Hey, got a bit of a problem with a very odd motherboard. The display is mondo off, from powerup. (This is an eBay find.) I suspect that its previous owner worked in a hospital with 75hz monitors, and I don't have anything in the house that will display a coherent picture. Board is a Commell LE-370.

To be clear: I've got a couple people who can help me with this, but I want to see if I can do it myself. I want to know if one specific idea will work -- we don't need to go trying to fix the board here. I just want feedback on the following:

I figured out that flashing the BIOS will likely fix it, and while I can use a CLI basically blindly if I know what to type where, the BIOS flash utility for this board told me that "this program will not run in DOS mode" :( oops. For the record, I've tried resetting the BIOS both with jumper and with battery (but not both at the same time). No joy.

Someone on another forum told me that I could --MAYBE-- flash the BIOS by booting another computer and hotswapping the chip, then running the flash utility. Both chips would (obviously) have to be the same socket type. The chip in the misbehaving board is a socketed PLCC, and I'm smart enough to know I'd need a puller to do it (no screwdrivers here!) -- I can get that on eBay for $5 or so, though.

How likely would I be to destroy something, if I were to do this hotswap trick? is there anything other than the chip size that I need to consider? (eg, are all BIOS chips SPI, or are some of them I2C, or do they have different pinouts sometimes, etc.)
 
I think I would build an OS on another PC.. I would use XP x86 with all generic drivers, except make sure the LAN driver is installed, so hopefully it will pick up the LAN and get you an IP address on your router.. Boot your Commell from that and RDP (mstsc /console) to it from another PC on your network and attempt the flash that way. There may be a few holes in my thinking.. Please point them out if you see any.
 
The only hole I see is one you couldn't have anticipated -- my networking skills are essentially limited to plugging a cable in. I don't know a thing about SSH, etc.
 
I think sinclair-zx81 is onto something--set up XP on a different machine, enable Remote Desktop (have it start on boot) then swap out the boards. Let it boot without a monitor on the commell board, then from a different machine, use Remote Desktop to view the commell board's desktop, and run the BIOS utility that way.
 
I have NO idea how to do that.

But I can type without an intelligible screen, so I'm going to try a linux trick (set resolution through that) and if that doesn't work, I've got a way to flash the bios half-blind.
 
Didn't work. The bios utility is erroring out -- I suspect that it 'knows' I'm trying to flash the bios with a copy of the current version, and it won't do it because it's not an update. It's the stock Award bios utility, v. 8.88 -- any hints?

If not, then I'm willing to try the rdp thing tomorrow, if someone can step me through it. I'm all out of crossover cables AFAIK, but I've got a spare router and plenty of /regular/ ethernet cables.
 
BIOS flashed successfully. Didn't fix the problem :(

Mods close, need to find a monitor that will work with this board now.
 
LVDS has NO standard pinout. I've spoken with those ebay companies before, particularly njytouch. Best they can do is one of two things -- (1) supply you with a VGA->LVDS converter for a panel, or (2) supply you with a minimum of 100 custom cables.

Besides, I don't have $40 for one of those converters. I don't think it would help here anyways.
 
Something doesn't sound right. I looked at the manual for the thing and the only thing I can think of besides a BIOS setting that could cause your issue (on the board itself, and barring a problem with the on-board video) would be a custom firmware, which you would have overwritten with the flash. So.. If we assume the video on board is good, check your VGA cable for bent pins.. that has bit me in the past. Or try a different VGA cable. Also, are you using a DVI to VGA adapter?
 
No DVI to VGA. I don't have anything DVI in the house except a couple graphics cards.

I think it IS a BIOS setting -- been saying that all along. I did have one thought, though -- there's a jumper to set the LVDS panel voltage. What happens if I turn on the board without that jumper? (I'm asking here rather than just trying it cuz I don't want to accidentally cook the board.)
 
If it's a BIOS setting and you totally cleared the CMOS, then that means the setting is a default and that a normal monitor would not work on it by default, which is why I mentioned the custom firmware, which you would have eliminated. I can't imagine a product like this shipping with a locked freq of 75hz.. How about this.. using your monitor that sort of works, get in to BIOS setup and hit F6 to load Fail-Safe Defaults, the F10 to Save and exit.
 
Are you sure the monitor works? Are there any manual switches on the back or a front panel that selects frequency? I've seen the display you describe (1/5 of screen compressed and repeating), on very old monitors that are going bad, or when the cable is bad (like the Sync pin bent). I think I'm about out of ideas at the moment...
 
no bent pins.

no dip switches -- just knobs for brightness, contrast, and h/v pos.

all pins straight. cable is attached. tested monitor before, works fine @ 640*480, 16b resolution. i think it's a fixed res screen.

if you're better than me you might find specs on google (i had no luck) it's a samsung cvl-4955.
 
Got it figured. Homemade PCI riser + PCI video card, will work.

Regular PCI riser won't, cuz it's a cardedge connector on the board that needs to become a slot.

I've got this, tho.
 
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