BIOS Patch needed please for Asus A7V400-MX

by **Xybertek** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 11:23 am

BIOS Date: 12/21/04
BIOS Type: Phoenix - Award BIOS v6.00PG
BIOS ID: 12/21/2004-KM400A-8235-A7V400MX-00
BIOS Eval: ?
Chipset: VIA 82C3205 rev 0
Superio: Winbond 697HF rev 2 found at port 2Eh

It's an old computer for my son. It's an AMD Athlon Xp 1.9. Basically the hard disk died and I am unable to find IDE hard disks here. So I bought a SATA drive a seagate ST380815AS. I bought a PCI card that I could connect the SATA to. Its chipset is Via VT6421. I assumed it would take care of BIOS seeing the SATA drive. Apparently not. When I load XP in the CD-ROM and it installs its drivers it can detect the SATA drive. But after installation when it boots up for the first time, it cannot find the drive anymore since BIOS cannot detect the SATA.

I need a BIOS patch that would incorporate the SATA rom in BIOS so it can be detected and I can boot from the SATA.

Or alternatively if you know of any workarounds that would not need BIOS splicing I would appreciate also. Thanks in advance.

by **edwin** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 11:31 am

What is the exact make and model of the card you bought? It needs to make itself present at boot time so the bios knows there's a bootable device there. In the mainboard bios you need to include SCSI in the controller boot order because that is the mechanism used to attach to the SATA card.

by **Xybertek** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:05 am

It's a generic card, just named G-P401 and from research it does not include a rom chip for bootup. There is a downloadable rom for it which i downloaded but do not know how to splice in my BIOS. Once xp loads it can automatically load its drivers for it and I can access it. It works fine as storage but the IDE is dying and I need to be able to boot from the SATA.

by **edwin** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 7:00 am

Is this it?
http://www.globalsources.com/gsol/I/PCI ... 606750.htm

If so, you bought the wrong card, you need a bootable one with a bootrom chip.