NEC Ready 7020 desktop - killed BIOS

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

NEC Ready 7020 Pentium 75 desktop. Killed the original Phoenix BIOS trying to use this system to hotflash another one. (Don't ask - I left the flash-recovery floppy in the drive, and it tried to flash the original BIOS.)

Anyway, I don't have a copy of the original BIOS, but I have discovered that there are some BIOS images on ftp://ftp.nec-computers.com/pub/itemnr/ .

The problem is, there are tons of them, and I have no idea how to find out which one corresponds to this system. I don't know who makes the motherboard, but it has an SiS chipset on it.

Does anyone have any idea how to find the BIOS file I need? I'm presently manually going through and downloading each one and checking it. Not a speedy solution.

Good news! I wasn't able to find the right reference BIOS yet on nec-computers.com, but I was messing with the system again, and it booted! I guess I didn't kill the BIOS after all, there must have been some other problem preventing it from booting. I also noticed, that the BIOS chip in this case is an ST 12V chip, all the other ones are SST 5V chips. Must have been saved by not having the 12V programming voltage applied, or something.

[Rainbow]

12V chips won't flash at with only 5V. Is it something like ST M28F101? I never seen ST chip on a motherboard

Rainbow wrote:

12V chips won't flash at with only 5V. Is it something like ST M28F101? I never seen ST chip on a motherboard

Yep, that's the one.

N.B. A little bad news; I had the system all ready to go for someone, decided to swap some memory around, later had no-boot memory error beeps, no matter what I did. Seems the screwdriver I was using to move the SIMM clips slipped, and may have caused a tiny break in a pin on a nearby 208-pin SMT PQFP chip, which appears to be wired to the memory array. I tried a little soldering work, but it's pretty clear from soldering 4 pins together with just a tounch, that I need a new tip, and maybe some other tools. Ugh. At least the system didn't cost me anything to start with, so no big loss if I have to junk it.