80GB: 23/12/2002-61-0209-001169-00111111-071595-440BX

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

Nick,
To your question the answer is No.
Please enlighten!
Rainbow,
How do you include BOOTBLOCK cos at the moment I can't do anything.
If you are saying that the PC might reboot from floppy when holding
down Ctrl + Home then I'll give it a whirl.
I did read in uniflash.doc that if you enter A:\uniflash -E backup.bin in the Autoexec.bat file it might restore Bios to original settings but it didn't include holding down Ctrl + Home.
Any theories?:(

[NickS]

Clearing CMOS; either use the CMOS clear jumper (check your motherboard manual) or remove the CMOS battery for a period.

It's more likely that if you have not flashed the boot block, you now have an AMI bootblock with an Award rest-of-the-BIOS. As the AMI bootblock has an emergency recovery feature for when it detects a BIOS probem, you should be able to put your original AMI BIOS back in it by following the procedure. Check out the the FAQ in the main Wim's site, no. 9 -

AMI: The AMI boot-block BIOS will look for a AMIBOOT.ROM file on a diskette. Copy and rename the correct BIOS file on the floppy and power up the PC. The floppy doesn't need to be bootable. You will see the PC read the floppy, after about 4 minutes you will hear 4 beeps, this means the transfer is done. Reboot the PC and modify the CMOS for your configuration

Rainbow is saying that you may have to hold down Ctrl and Home at power-on to invoke this.

Nick,

Thanx, my PC is now back to life.
I would now like advice as to where I go from here
ie. Do I continue flashing with award bios v1.6 under your supervision
or do I forget it and buy a new motherboard or just forget it?

Jim

[NickS]

Well, if you are considering buying another motherboard, it depends what you were going to do with this one. If you don't have great plans for it, I would try again.
Using uniflash -E filename will overwrite the bootblock, according to the documentation.

Does that mean if things go "tits up" I can reinstall the original bios.
I don't particuarly want to mess up the board I have. In other words I'd
prefer to have something that works than nothing at all.

[NickS]

No. The example you gave above of recovering with uniflash -E backup.bin assumes that you have made a backup called backup.bin and that your (probably non-AMI) bootblock is (a) detecting a bad boot image and (b)in sufficiently good shape to boot from floppy.

If flashing results in a "dead" system, your recourse is to other techniques such as (a) having your BIOS ROM programmed by someone else or (b) "hot-flashing" using another motherboard.

The fact that you were able to flash the ROM (even if incorrectly) is a good sign. Personally, I'd go for it, but it must be your decision. BTW, which country are you in ?

Sorry.
1st things first, when I reflashed the original bios I copied the backup.bin file to floppy and renamed it amiboot.rom. I then placed the floppy into the PC and turned it on. After waiting about 2-3 mins 4beeps were heard.
I rebooted the PC after removing the floppy and hit del to reprog CMOS.

If you feel that I had flashed bios wrongly please list steps of correct way.

I'm in Cornwall.

Jim

[NickS]

Jim Rowe wrote:

If you feel that I had flashed bios wrongly please list steps of correct way.

No, the reflash was perfect, sorry that I was not clear enough. What I meant to say was that the original flashing of all but the bootblock of the Award BIOS shows that the BIOS ROM is flashable with Uniflash.

Nick,

I can see you don't like giving too much away, but how does one
alter the bootblock bios to conform with the new flashed bios and if when
I do the PC still doesn't want to fire up can I resort back to the original settings fairly easily.

Jim.

[Rainbow]

If you want to flash BIOS completely including bootblock, use "Flash BIOS image including bootblock" option in UniFlash's Advanced menu.
It's also written in the readme file:

NOTE: If you want to change between AMI <-> Award BIOS or flash BIOS for another motherboard, ALWAYS flash including bootblock.

[NickS]

Jim Rowe wrote:

Nick,
I can see you don't like giving too much away

???? I thought I'd been quite helpful.

but how does one alter the bootblock bios to conform with the new flashed bios

The bootblock is a part of the BIOS which the flash utility usually doesn't write to the BIOS ROM, on the basis that it is what you would use to recover from a bad flash or corrupt BIOS and why risk damaging it ? It will check whether the bootblock code in the ROM is the same as that in the BIOS file and warn you if there is a difference, just in case you are making a mistake. If you are changing from AMI to Award or vice versa you can expect to see this message, as you would also if they changed the bootblock to add extra functionality. So to change the bootblock you need to flash the entire BIOS including the bootblock. To do this, either
(a) as Rainbow says, run Uniflash and go into the advanced submenu and select "flash with bootblock" (I'm not in DOS right now so I can't check) or,
(b) as I understand it from the documentation you can use the command line "uniflash -e filename".

and if when I do the PC still doesn't want to fire up can I resort back to the original settings fairly easily.

You won't be able to resort to the original settings easily if you have overwritten the bootblock. If the bootblock will not load from floppy you are then in the situation of following one of the courses of action described in the FAQ on the Wim's BIOS main site under "my motherboard is dead", such as hot-swap flashing ("hot-flash") or asking someone to re-flash the BIOS for you.

Now, at last I can fight my conscience as to whether i do or don't.
Thank you.
I apologise for my previous comment but i did feel that we were toing and froing when a big to and a fro would have done.
Nevertheless I'm very grateful for the time you have given me and no doubt it won't end here.

regards

Jim

[edwin]

See that you get a spare chip to test with keeping the original in a safe place. Hotflash the spare on with the awrd bios, then see if it will work. You may be able to scavenge it from another socket 7 board as those are very cheap now...