Issue with GA-7zx mb --- Friend flashed wrong bios...

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

My friend was flashing his bios and he actually flashed the wrong bios onto his bios rom. I was wondering if there was a way to re-flash the bios other than the ways that I have alrdy tried, which are as follows:

Boot block ( pretty sure this might work, however I cant get the computer to access the floppy drive )
hot swap ( this will work as well however I have been unable to locate another computer with the same bios setup. I was wondering if I had a computer with the same socket if I could just reprogram that way but im not sure )

Other than that I have yet to try anything else, there is no ISA slot on the mb so we cant try that.

Btw, the bios is an AMIBIOS, but I dont believe it is there AMIBIOS8, I believe its the older version.

Thx in advance for the help..

Lagga

[NickS]

Lagga wrote:

hot swap ( this will work as well however I have been unable to locate another computer with the same bios setup. I was wondering if I had a computer with the same socket if I could just reprogram that way but im not sure )

There is a good chance that if you have a motherboard with the same shape socket you will be able to hot-swap. Check the programming voltage of the chips by looking for the part number under the label- 28Fxxx means 12V, 29Fxxx means 5V. Use Uniflash and use the advanced menu to flash with bootblock. As long as you don't blow it up by flashing a 5V part with 12V it should not be possible to do any damage even if it does not work.

ok, here are the numbers on the BIOS chip that I have...

39sf020
90-4c-nh
0007127-b

And here is a chip in another computer that I think I can hot flash with...

39sf020a
70-4c-nh
0146045-a


Now, can you tell me if its safe to go ahead and hot flash with the socket that the bottom chip is in??

thx,

Lagga

[Denniss]

Looks like very similar SST flashroms - should be no problem

I was wondering if there was a walk through on how to pull out the bios chip from the socket that my chip is in. I had heard that you can use a screw driver if you are careful, but I tried that a little and I felt as though I was putting too much pressure on the chip and that I was going to start chipping pieces off the sides if I continued.

If anyone can type up a walkthrough or tell me a good tool to use to pull the chip out that would be helpful.

Thx,

Lagga

[NickS]

You are more likely to break the socket. I have a cheap PLCC extractor tool which you can slip down tone of the two corner slots, hook under the corner of the chip and pull up. You can make one yourself from a strong paper-clip, see http://www.sinesys.com/pages/rfc1_micro.html

with the chip information posted a couple of posts ago, what set of numbers would I use to order a new chip from badflash.com because I just cant bring myself to go ahead and do a hotswap with the bios chips. I dont want to end up breaking more computers than is nessessary.

thx,

Lagga

[NickS]

Can you find somewhere local to flash the chip if you take it out (with the power off) ? Someone in Spain posting recently got his local electronics shop to flash his ROM for 3 Euros.
If ordering from Badflash, they should really know what chip your board needs but the number that will interest them is the 39f020. The most important thing is that the board is correctly ID'd so they put the right BIOS in.