Gigabyte GA-8SR533P motherboard dead...

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

by **ppgrainbow** » Mon Aug 30, 2010 11:40 pm

When I turned on my desktop PC this morning, I got this error message:

Award BootBlock BIOS v1.0
Copyright (c) 2000 Award Software, Inc.

BIOS ROM checksum error

Detecting floppy drive A media...
INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

Upon inserting the bootable floppy, I then got this message:

Drive A is: 1.44 Mb

BootBlock BIOS was only able to detect the 1.44 MB floppy disk.

The model of the motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8SR533P F1 with the BIOS ID 09/13/2002-SiS-645-6A6IXG0VC-00 and the chipset is SiS-645 revision 02. The CPU is a single core 2.4 GHz Pentium IV processor with 1.5 GB of memory.

I obtained a utility called FLASH860 that was included when I downloaded the update for the motherboard model, extracted it to a floppy diskette and inserted it into my PC. The utility contained the 8SR533P.F1 ROM file required to flash the BIOS. However, all attempts to flash the BIOS was unsuccessful as I got these error messages.

1. The Flash part is not supported - Press any key to continue...
2. Make sure the Flash is not protected - Press any key to continue...

And upon pressing enter, I get this error message:

3. The chipset is not supported - Press any key to continue...

Renaming the file to *.BIN didn't help and now I'm stuck and I can't seem to recover from BootBlock due to this. Is there anyway how to fix this?

By the way, I just don't want to risk having to replace the BIOS chip or obtain another Pentium IV motherboard since I'm only interested in legacy PCs now. The other devices including the 64 MB NVIDIA graphics card and the IDE hard disk are still working.

by **Denniss** » Tue Aug 31, 2010 7:33 pm

This kind of error is often cause by damaged RAM. Please test your system with only one module of RAM installed, you may need to test every single module. Another option would be a damaged RAM slot.
Could also be caused by a damaged CPU or motherboard but RAM causes it more often.

by **ppgrainbow** » Tue Aug 31, 2010 9:16 pm

Denniss wrote:This kind of error is often cause by damaged RAM. Please test your system with only one module of RAM installed, you may need to test every single module. Another option would be a damaged RAM slot.
Could also be caused by a damaged CPU or motherboard but RAM causes it more often.

I knew it. One of the memory modules that have been damaged might have caused the BIOS ROM checksum error. CPU-Z reported that two of the memory modules had the part number SUPERTALENT and the other memory module had the Apacer Technology manufacturer. This is something that technicians at Advanced Concepts (ACMicro) refused to fix three years ago.

If one of the memory modules have been pulled and the BIOS ROM checksum error continues, then it could be the BIOS ROM chip itself. But I don't know if it's likely or not. And if it's a damaged motherboard, I will probably have to hunt for another Pentium IV or a AMD Athlon XP compatible motherboard at eBay.

I'm gonna try to get a hold of a technician to investigate the issue. I'm hoping to get the memory upgraded to 2 GB with memory modules that I've found at eBay.

by **Th3_uN1Qu3** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 2:16 pm

Mixed RAM shouldn't cause any major trouble (except maybe the loss of dual channel), however that doesn't mean that one of the sticks isn't bad. Power up the computer with one stick at a time, and try flashing the BIOS on each. With a bit of luck, it'll get going.

by **ppgrainbow** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 6:31 pm

Th3_uN1Qu3 wrote:Mixed RAM shouldn't cause any major trouble (except maybe the loss of dual channel), however that doesn't mean that one of the sticks isn't bad. Power up the computer with one stick at a time, and try flashing the BIOS on each. With a bit of luck, it'll get going.

I never even attempted to flashed the BIOS, because the FLASH860 utility didn't even recognise the model name of the motherboard and the chipset at all. As I will be stuck on this laptop, I will try to get a technician to look at the motherboard to see what is wrong. I've heard that mixed latency timings on one of the memory modules are known to cause serious instability.

Do you know which DOS based utilities will recognise the model name of the motherboard as well as the chipset?

by **Denniss** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 7:30 pm

Please do not try to flash your Bios if the system is unstable or a memory module is suspected to be faulty. Even if you get a flashprog working it may be interrupted while flashing, killing the Bios.
Please try either known working memory modules or try each of the new ones individually.

by **ppgrainbow** » Wed Sep 01, 2010 10:16 pm

Denniss wrote:Please do not try to flash your Bios if the system is unstable or a memory module is suspected to be faulty. Even if you get a flashprog working it may be interrupted while flashing, killing the Bios.
Please try either known working memory modules or try each of the new ones individually.

That sounds fair enough. When I turned on the PC, the motherboard did POST and I was pretty lucky that I didn't even attempt to flash the BIOS at all. I was barely able to get into Safe Mode before the BIOS ROM checksum error occurred upon restart, which is one of the reasons why this PC is unstable. One of the defective memory modules are gonna have to get taken out and I'm hoping to try the 2 1 GB DDR PC2100 333MHz memory modules and see how it goes from here.

by **ppgrainbow** » Mon Oct 11, 2010 3:49 am

I would like to make a final update that the BIOS chip on the motherboard was corrupt. Also, the Apacer 512 MB memory module was defective from the get go and technicians refused to fix it more than three years ago. The PC3200 400MHz memory chip was located in Slot 0 and Memtest86 reported errors which caused the program to hang: http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/8800 ... 86hang.png

Unfortunately, the motherboard had to get replaced, because it was nearly impossible to remove the Phoenix BIOS D868 BIOS ROM chip without destroying the motherboard any further, because it's so old and even has been prone to dust for almost three years. The replaced motherboard is a refurbished Intel D865GLCLK, manufactured in March 2003. When the technician tried to put the second 1 GB DDR PC 2700 333 MHz memory module, the computer wouldn't boot...so to solve this, two of the SUPERTALENT 512 MB PC3200 400 MHz memory modules were put instead and the computer booted without problems.

I'm hoping that my PC with 2 GB of memory works without problems for weeks and months to come!

by **edwin** » Mon Oct 11, 2010 3:09 pm

Keep a good eye on the bigger capacitor in the front of the board, if it's a Rubycon you should be safe.

by **ppgrainbow** » Sun Oct 17, 2010 10:01 pm

edwin wrote:Keep a good eye on the bigger capacitor in the front of the board, if it's a Rubycon you should be safe.

That sounds wonderful! A lot of motherboards made between 1999 and as recently as 2007 had poorly made capacitors that would either bulge or burst, which caused computers to not boot anymore.

Anyways, if in the near future, I encounter any problems with the Intel D865GLCLK motherboard, I will let you know.

So for now, please consider closing this thread. Thanks!

by **edwin** » Sun Oct 17, 2010 10:46 pm

I've recapped 6 boards so far and the time span you mention is covered completely. Slot1 board (MSI) and a LGA775 (AsRock)