Can't Find BIOS Upgrade for Biostar MotherBoard

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

Hi,
I was tracking down a new bios for this board myself after I was trying out a new one and lost the old one (1.10a) that was on it. (being stupid I know) It was one hell of a quest, but I found a more recent bios for the M5SIB board. I'd rather not anyone else have to go through what I did to find it, given that the board was used and called many other names from PB and the like. I have loaded and tested the bios in my own board and it works like a champ. I can't attest to what size drive it will handle, as I don't have any drive larger than a 20GB. But this new bios is for me more stable than the previous bios that I had which was referred to as version 1.10 Now the version that I have is the 'b' version 1.10 This time it doesn't state that in the bios screen like it did with my 'a' version, but the date does reflect the update, dated 10/12/99 as it also does on the bin file. I believe this is a PB bios (the exe file name refers to the 992 PB mobo) as it has a logo file on the disk, but I am not positive, since I bypassed straight to the award flash program. I couldn't stand having the PB logo up there with the last bios. Since I did find this bios on a hunch (PB and thier multiple name schemes! No wonder they ran and hid in europe!) because of a tip I read here, I wish to return the favor here as well. Feel free to e-mail me to get a copy if you'd like. madcat@aselabs.com BTW-This newer bios has turned out to be surprisingly strong overclocker. The K6-2 300 I have been using in it would only stay stable at no more than 375Mhz. It is now clocked and holding very stable at 413Mhz (5.5 x 75fsb) I'll try getting it stable at 415 using the 83fsb speed. There is a jumper combo that will enable an 83Mhz fsb on this board.(pcb ver. 2.0 anyways)

Cheers!

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actually yes there is a big difference. from what i can tell. the 1.05 actually has more user settings then the 1.10version. which why someone thought of that idea i have no clue. right now i myself am looking into Bios Tweak, ive seen alot of stuff disabled that the MB supports for both versions. like burst PCI memory transfers. ive done benchmarks on both versions, and after i did manual bios tweaks and the results for the pegasus MB by enabling some simple settings is absolutely amazing i just posted a new post about this same AWARD bios myself hopeing someone recently came acrost a different version then 1.05 or 1.10 also if somone has a copy of the 1.10 version please send it to me, i had a head crash and lost both flash files. TY

How is the re-write for the BIOS on the Packard Bell BIOSTAR Pegease M5SIB Board doing?

Actually rainbow put up a version of the bios on the site for me, and it works great... if he is working on a updated version of that i would love to hear about it also....

If you look at the previos messages, Warlock found an updated BIOS for this board. I have not emailed him myself. You should try contacting him Sycholic.

what i would love to have is a bios flash that would give me every single setting available even the hidden ones. ive changed 1.10 to show all its normally unshown setting but there is still tons that arent even show that a bios editor ive seen shows. but right now im happy.

this board drives me crazy,

with the original bios, the hd was detected correctly under winxp with the limitation jumper,

after flashing the bios (frequent crashes, cpu not detected correctly) the drive was limited to 32,248 gb

i tried ddo with maxblast3 but xp freezes during installation,

i tried different settings but nothing worked

i need a bios update/patch because i have no money for a pci-ata-controller
i'm not sure if i could use one of the patches (great site !!!!!!!!)

can anybody help me out of this nightmare ?

[Rainbow]

I have these BIOSes for Biostar M5SIB board:
10/23/1998-SiS-5598-W877-2A5IIB0BC-00
BIOS Ver. 1.05

02/06/1999-SiS-5598-W877-2A5IIB0BC-00
BIOS Ver. 1.10

Which one do you want (both can be patched to support HDDs up to 128GB)?

Amazing I posted this topic almost 2 years ago and it is still ticking. What did I decide to do with my current BIOS trouble with this board? I took the PCI card route. I will consider the BIOS flash part, but I am uncertain if the BIOS chip is flashable. There are other things to consider as well.

Here is my question about the BIOS currently available on this site. Where would I go on how to access the BIOS patches? What about tutorials and steps to update and saved the old BIOS version? I am still new to BIOS updates. I am afraid of having a non-functional board. I guess I need to learn how to work the BIOS level as well.

[NickS]

kuyalfinator wrote:

Amazing I posted this topic almost 2 years ago and it is still ticking.

In keeping with the tradition of this thread, I thought I'd blow the dust off it....

Here is my question about the BIOS currently available on this site. Where would I go on how to access the BIOS patches?

If you had replied to Rainbow, he would have sent you a BIOS with the patch included, ready to flash. Some tested BIOSes are posted at the "tested" link in my signature. Untested ones I have patched are at the "untested" link, some of the other Wim's associates do something similar.

What about tutorials and steps to update and saved the old BIOS version? I am still new to BIOS updates. I am afraid of having a non-functional board. I guess I need to learn how to work the BIOS level as well.

Step-by-step guides to flashing ? one of the threads in the Collected Wisdom forum has pointers to two of them.

bifi wrote:

this board drives me crazy,

with the original bios, the hd was detected correctly under winxp with the limitation jumper,

after flashing the bios (frequent crashes, cpu not detected correctly) the drive was limited to 32,248 gb

i tried ddo with maxblast3 but xp freezes during installation,

i tried different settings but nothing worked

i need a bios update/patch because i have no money for a pci-ata-controller
i'm not sure if i could use one of the patches (great site !!!!!!!!)

can anybody help me out of this nightmare ?

I have tried installing XP Home and Windows 2000 pro on this board. It gave me the same problems. The biostar mother archetiture I think was onlyl suppose to handle up to Windows 98. The tag on the packard bell machine said "Designed only for Windows 98." Me not believing, I tried to install it only. XP and Win2kPro will not install on this board. "

I have a message for you eager posters out there. I was the original poster of the thread and wanted to send a message to the wimsbios staff and members. It is pre-typed so please excuse repeating myself.

Message to wimsbios web site. I have decided to revisit my 32 gig limitation problem on this biostar mother. It has been apparent to me that I need an ethernet connection, but in order to do so I need to free up one of the PCI slots.

Right now, it has a Pci video card, a modem, and the Pci adapter card. So, in the coming months, I will be refreshing my memory on how to backup an existing bios. Also, I must find my original documentation for this machine. I wasn’t sure if the bios chip in this biostar board is flash-able, but with the help from biostar support I think I will be ok.

I may plan to reclaim some of the lost space on the two drives on this board. Swapping the drives will depend if the bios upgrade is successful. If I still cannot upgrade the bios, then I have to image the 40 gig drive using only 10 gigs to an 20 gig drive. The 40 gig drive can go into another machine I was planning on building. Stay tuned as I decide and gather the parts I need to getting a free pci slot open. It is going to be a long grueling process.