Hotflash 256k in board that came with 128k flashrom -> er

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

Hi all,

what I'm trying to do is to hotflash a 256k flashrom from an Asus P2B-DS (i440BX) in an old Data Expert 8661 (a really hard-to-kill board...) board which has an i430VX chipset and uses its original 128k flashrom to boot. I'm using Uniflash 1.35 (it worked this morning at work for another Hotflash I did, very nice).

The problem is that trying to flash the new Asus bios to the 256k chip always results in errors. During the flash process the progress bar always shows random red blocks. Each flash run (with the same bios file and chip) results in different ones getting red, very seldomly all of them stay green.
However in call cases after the flash process is done it gives a "flash verification error" and the progress bar shows a mix of several green X'es and green blocks.

I tried several supported 256k Flashroms with the same result.
I also doubt the floppy drive or the disk is broken.

So is it even possible to flash a 256k chip in a board that came with an 128 chip? On the Uniflash page I learned that there is even a 1 pin layout difference between 256k and 128k. Would that affect the flashing in this case ? Is there any way to get around this problem ?

Thanks

Watz

[ajzchips]

I've flashed several 256KB BIOS chips on boards that originally had 128KB. The PCCHIPS TXPRO, SOYO 5TF, etc. They flashed correctly.

[Rainbow]

i430VX chipset supports 256KB chips - but the board might not have the topmost address pin connected to the ROM socket.
And

uniflash.doc wrote:

KNOWN BUGS
- 256KB BIOSes don't work on some i430VX/HX boards (AWDFLASH works!)

I know that I've flashed 256KB chip once on a SanLi/SuperPower SL-586V board using Awdflash but it did not work using UniFlash. I have this board here but it's not very healthy - a bad joint somewhere causing lockups.

uniflash.doc wrote:

KNOWN BUGS
- 256KB BIOSes don't work on some i430VX/HX boards (AWDFLASH works!)

Guess i should have RTFM

But anyway, I was able to fix this and another board today

I had some old 440LX board in BAT format lying around.
No name, no manufacturer or model given, just a revision number printed on the board.
I fried that board like 4 years ago when I put a RivaTNT card into the AGP slot. I was sure the card overloaded the 3.3V current on that board as it has both AT and ATX power connectors and at the time I used the AT one which doesn't come with 3.3V. There must be some kind of voltage regulator thats fried but I only found the 2.2V ones for the Celeron CPU.
Since the board supports both EDO PS/2 and SDRAM DIMM modules theres a jumper that lets you switch between 3.3V and 5V. Most interestingly the 5V position had 5V, but the 3.3V position something about 0.8V. So I thought why not put on an ATX power supply and short its 3.3V to one of the jumper pins on the 3.3V position.
And what can I say.....it works lol. Like a charm even. I soldered a wire to make the connection permanent.

And with this board working, I was able to hotflash the ASUS P2B-DS bios in it using Uniflash. The only problem was that the LX board had 12V on the VPP pin and Uniflash reported that its a 12V flashrom. So I just bend the VPP pin of the 5V chip from the asus board so it would not connect with the socket.
And that board also worked again with the new bios (instead of giving just a black screen and some incredible alarm sound).
It turned out that my assumption was right, the hardware monitor chip on the P2B-DS is screwed and reports failures on some fans and voltages.
The new bios reports the failures on the boot screen instead of not booting at all with an alarm sound.

Oh and another thing...Winbond flashroms rock.
For the second time I accidently put in a Winbond chip (the P2B 256k one and the 430VX board 128k one) into the socket the wrong way. Both times the chips got so hot I burned my fingers on them and I was sure I fried them hehe. But they survived both times. Unbelievable.

Thanks for you help anyway, Uniflash rocks

Watz