Upgrade for Award 4.51PG Wintec

[ajzchips]

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

[ajzchips]

Well, the BIOS I had on my MP071B was:
07/02/1998-i430VX-2A59GW0AC-00
MP071B Intel 430VX / Prime 3B ISA / PCI ( DMI )

And it was an official release, not a beta.

[edwin]

so, this is confirmed

ajz:
MP071B
2A59GW0AC

begintrans:
MP071
2A59GW09C

I'm beginning to think the bioses I have are displaying the wrong identification. I adapted them to show the right board. I uploaded the files again, this time corrected to what is shown in this posting.

[ajzchips]

From an old edom.com FAQ:

Q: After reading the information about the MP071A board, which I have. I'm still not sure if I can upgrade to the new AMD K-6 233 chip. The settings describe the mp071B board, I have the MP071A board.The home page of AMD to make matters worse doesn't mention the mp071 board. So my question is, can I use the MP071A board with the new chip?
Answer: The MP071A can not support AMD K6 CPU because of CPU voltage and Award BIOS. That's why we re-design our MP071A to MP071B model. Please check your user's manual for CPU compatibility.

...practically the same board?

[edwin]

Not really no, if you are missing support for a complete line of processors...

Definitively I don´t have the MP071B, as my MB has 2-pin JP8 and JP9,
and not 3-pin JP8, JP9 and JP20 as indicated in http://www.xs4all.nl/~elhvb/mboards/edom/mp071B/mp071B.html.

So I have come to the following conclusion:

I can flash one of these two BIOSes:
- 03/13/98-i430VX-2A59GW09C-01, from edwin (http://www.wimsbios.com/~edwin/downloads/mp071.bin) (Is this correct, edwin?)
- 11/18/97-i430VX-2A59GW09C-00, beta from ajzchips (I don´t know its URL, please ajzchips)

Which one would you flash?
Would you try ajzchips' BIOS and then edwin's, or would you go directly to edwin's, or none of them ...?

I went to [url]web.archive.org[/url], but in the edom's archive there's nothing about MP071 or MP071B BIOS update ...

Which program should I use to backup my actual BIOS and flash the new one?

-----
PD for ajzchip: Where is that beta BIOS from? Where did it come from?

[edwin]

About "my" bios: yes
About the beta: from Award themselves when they were still publicly available. They stopped near Dec 2000.

[ajzchips]

My personal opinion: the MP071(A) and MP071B are practically the same motherboards, except for the more powerful voltage regulator (+ more voltage settings) on the latter, as mentioned by Wintac/EDOM's FAQ.

IIRC, the MP071B has a switching voltage regulator, whereas the MP071(A) has a linear one.

So, if I were you, I'd try the version Edwin suggests.

PS: make sure you master the art of hotswapping and recovery from BIOS flash failures, just in case.

A backup of your BIOS can be made using the /Sy switch "Awdflash /Pn /Sy backup.bin"

/Pn = program NO
/Sy = save YES