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Is it possible to easily replace a BIOS chip / transfer them between motherboards?
(Kinda related to my previous question, but different motherboard)
Putting together some PCs to give away from old parts sitting about. A midrange one was to be made with a TopGun (PCChips M560) socket 7 motherboard as it supports the faster of my spare S7 CPUs and 83mhz transfer to DIMMs... but not >8gb hard discs and I had a 10gb to use with it, so I tried to upgrade the BIOS.
All went well, got relevant upgrade file from the makers website, suitable AMIBIOS flasher tool, & set-to with a clean DOS boot. But something went wrong & it hung halfway (later found that the chip seemed slightly unseated). Though later use of BIOS Recovery mode managed to get it to POST, it's got a persistent "CMOS Checksum Bad" error, stopping it from booting, that I can't shake with any suggested method.
But I DO have a near-useless 486 board with a practically identical looking AMIBIOS chip on it. Could I swap them & use recovery mode key combination at power-on to force overwrite & make it work?
Other things...
1/ I haven't tried fully reseating the chip and reflashing it (recovery) yet... will do now, just realised :)
2/ Loading setup defaults, putting in a brand new (& voltage tested) battery, reloading the old code, etc etc etc, none of it (or many others) worked...
3/ Is there instead any way to force the thing to fully clear itself and start from scratch? (excepting the recovery boot block)
4/ All my other BIOS flashes so far have gone well, I know how to handle the process. Knew it was screwed from the second it paused, gave it a couple minutes to think, then sighed and turned it off.
5/ Replacement chips & professional reflashing services are prohibitively expensive
Having it working isn't critical, it's just a right pain if it's broken as it was the best left of what I had available (largest/fastest memory capability, ATX power, USB/PS2 headers etc). Between that and the Athlon board playing up, my remaining systems are facing some harsh specification hits. :-(
... I KNOW it's going to be the wrong BIOS version... it's from a 486 and I'm putting it on a Pentium MMX board! :-D
But as it's got the same pins and pretty much all the same other markings I thought it would be worth trying to forcibly reflash it. The TopGun seems to have a pretty small BIOS for a pentium (128kb) which I think is similar/same as most 486s so it should have space... just so long as the old one has the Recovery feature, or it's built into the motherboard. Not bothered about ruining the 486 one (the board it's off is a cheap no-brander that's about 13 years old and not destined to be used again) so long as the Pentium isn't damaged further still by my attempts.
3 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
You cant tell anything by lookin at the chip! It could have any different number of bios versions on it!
- computertech82Lv 61 decade ago
Usually same board bios chips can be switched out. If they are not alike (different chipsets,etc) then it will probably not work. If alike, could try hot swaping. I've done "hot" swaps before. Booting with a good bios, while board is on, switch bios chip (very tricky-i had it almost unplugged from socket before turning on), and switch the bad one to the board, then flash then reboot...good as new.
- headleeLv 44 years ago
~.~ it rather is done, even nonetheless it rather is going to be perplexing. residing house windows will freak out via fact each and all of the motherboard settings would be diverse. in case you could, attempt to get a board it rather is interior a similar progression tree as your present day board. Like, in case you have a Nforce 2 based chipset, attempt to enhance using a nVidia based chipset.
