Precautions to take when hot swapping ? Dead motherboard.

[GTS]

I've been given an ECS (eilte group) P6LX-A+ motherboard with a celeron 450 to use for a spare computer in the house. the previous owner declared it dead have tried to upload the wrong BIOS file and suffered a blackout halfway through, what luck.

a few questions for those that know better:

if i try and boot it using either AGP or ISA video cards my monitor registers NOTHING. connecting a floppy to the motherboard or to an ISA floppy controller gives nothing there either, so i can safely assume the boot block section of the BIOS (if it had it) is dead too, right ?

so i go onto the next stage *sigh*

the BIOS is an award distribution on a winbond w29c011 flash rom chip which it would seem has been tested to work with uniflash.

now i do have another motherboard of similar vintage, a gigabyte, it's also got an award based BIOS (the chip doesn't look like a winbond though), without replacing the chip on the ecs motherboard i understand i can hot swap the BIOS chips on the working computer (assuming the BIOS is shadowed), use uniflash and if the chip isn't in some way damaged, flash it all back together.

trouble is, what if i damage the BIOS on the computer MY MOTHER USES. i might be adult but mum is capable of inducing sufficient wrath to put me off the idea.........

what precautions can i take, and is there a better way of doing this ?

incidentally, there's a computer shop here that has some "defective" motherboards, if i pinch their 32-pin BIOS chips and hope that one gets the boot process far enough to let uniflash get the BIOS onto it, will it matter if the chips aren't identical (eg if the replacement is at least 128kb in size ?)

Ta all

[Rainbow]

One thing to remember: always triple check the chip orientation before inserting into the socket!
Hope you read this http://rainbow.ht.st/hardware/hotflash.html

[GTS]

done that........ what can i put the "swapped" chip in to make sure it wont get any static on it ? been a while since i did electronics, i'm a mechanical engineer

if the chip i'm wanting to reflash is dead, can i use another 128kb or 128kb+ chip that fits the same package ?

[jm]

Hi GTS

Good question! I have the same doubt you have:

Does someone knows if any 128k bios chip serves to be flashed in any motherboard with 128K bios chip (the same question aplies to 256K bios chip or others)????

Another question I have is? Would be possible to flash by hot-swamp a 256K bios chip in a motherboard with a 128k bios chip?

[NickS]

done that........ what can i put the "swapped" chip in to make sure it wont get any static on it ? been a while since i did electronics, i'm a mechanical engineer

Kitchen foil (aluminium foil), static shielding bag (like your video card came in). Keep the metalwork of the PC in contact with your skin while handling the chip to maintain the same voltage (hopefully zero) with respect to the chip.

if the chip i'm wanting to reflash is dead, can i use another 128kb or 128kb+ chip that fits the same package ?

Maybe. Rainbow's the expert, but it depends on the BIOS and the type of chip. For example, if the BIOS contains code which allows you to flash automatically from diskette when the BIOS is corrupt, it must know how to write that kind of chip.

Does someone knows if any 128k bios chip serves to be flashed in any motherboard with 128K bios chip (the same question aplies to 256K bios chip or others)????

It depends whether your motherboard has a suitable hardware configuration or not.

Another question I have is? Would be possible to flash by hot-swamp a 256K bios chip in a motherboard with a 128k bios chip?

It depends whether your motherboard has a suitable hardware configuration or not. (You mean swap, not swamp)

[ajzchips]

Another question I have is? Would be possible to flash by hot-swamp a 256K bios chip in a motherboard with a 128k bios chip?

Well, I've successfully hotflashed several 256KB BIOSes on my old M919 (PCCHIPS 486 board, with its 128KB BIOS). No problem at all.

[GTS]

hotswap success ! one resurrected motherboard.

used a antistatic bag.

i'd STILL be interested to see what would have happened with another chip...... i suspect if the flashing program supports the chip, then a good result shouldn't be impossible.......

[NickS]

hotswap success ! one resurrected motherboard.

used a antistatic bag.

i'd STILL be interested to see what would have happened with another chip...... i suspect if the flashing program supports the chip, then a good result shouldn't be impossible.......

Well done!

[firyembers]

Hi There
I've Hot flashed several boards over the last couple of years with varying degrees of success
The best bet is tour the localshows for cheapest mobo's with the bios chip in a socket(Lately i'm finding that they have been removed) Pay £3-5
Get home and see what it'll do
Out of 5 purchased one day 2 booted to dos prompt.With a chosen one and after visiting my local electronics shop to purchase 6 32pin Dil sockets and a ZIF socket(this is a socket that works like the mobo cpu socket and makes the removal of the chip in question real easy)
Make a tower block of sockets with the zif socket on top,remove the bios battery,remove the bios chip,insert the tower block (this gives room around the bios chip to work and insert the original chip and boot to dos.
Try and use a vx,hx,tx minimum chipset type board and a isa video card.
Remove the bios chip,easy now with a zif socket and put in the bios chip you want to reflash correctly or recover whatever.I have found that the later Ami flash prgs are the better all rounder for flashing, it will do Award bios also just use the correct chipset and bios chip reconition Which also is mostly automatic
128kb size is for 1meg flash chip,256kb is for 2meg flash and so on
If you have a 128kb file and only a replacement 2meg chip 256kb then using Winhex or ultaedit(I use winhex its relatively easy to use)Open the file in winhex and add the file again 128+128=256 ,save the file as a different name and go ahead and flash Its worked for me on three ocasions i've had to do this.
Between the various makes of bios chips SST Winbond,intel,Atmec etc They follow the Jedec Pin out std and thus if you want to flash a 1meg chip in a board that has a 2meg bios chip it will flash ok and viceversa
Aopen boards are the hardest to reflash in another board their bios flasher is dediacated to the aopen mobo.
Also it is possible to replace an Intel 40pin 2meg bios with a 32 pin 2 meg chip
If the chip in question has a sticker on it remove and do a search on the underlying numbers
The chip manufactures Really make all their information available for an easy download
Hope this helps a little Seeing that dead board come up with the Epa Logo is just a buzz
Have fun
Regards
Grahame

[GTS]

some smart ideas mate, i might go out and about and get some BIOS chips to play with...... "just in case" !