ASUS A7A266 Flash Failed

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

I have a dead A7A266. The BIOS flash failed with a run-time error during upgrade. Anyways, I need to try get this board back up and running. I was considering a hotswap with my ASUS P5A-B board, but my P5A BIOS is a 5v winbond w29ee10 chip. This is a 1M or 128k chip correct? (Still learning). Would it even be possible to hotswap this chip with the 2M chip from the dead A7A bios? I was considering trying a bootblock only update of the A7A chip in the P5A board in case there are addressing issues. Is the possible? Or is there any place you could refer me to in order to help me better understand what is involved in flashing hardware wise? Any help would be apreciated, thanks.

[Denniss]

It should be possible to flash the A7A266 Bios in your P5A but you have to use the DOS flashprog AFLASH . > Better use Aflash everytime and not the Liveupdate !!

P.S. : I use a P2B to flash a wide variety of Asus Bios with Aflash and no problems .

Thanks

I am glad to hear that it is possible. What I wasnt sure was if there were issues with the 2M chips on my 1M P5A board. Again, Ive done lots of reading and nothing really mentions this so I was leary. Didnt want to mess up my P5A board as well. Damn A7A died with a runtime error when I forgot XP creates a Win ME boot disk with dos drivers loaded. Im hoping that the bootdisk caused the problems.

I noticed that the aflash had an option to avoid the bootblock on the bios. Im thinking now in retrospect that I should have used that swicth so that I would at least be able to have bootblock access next time. Would this have saved me?

Well, regardless, thanks for the feedback. Sounds like Ill give it a shot now.

I just looked up the P2B BIOS on asus web site and noticed that in fact your BIOS is a 256k or 2M bios. My P5A board contains a _128k_ or 1M chip. This is what Im worried about. Can a 1M board do or address the full 2M or 256k of the 2M BIOS in the socket of a 1M board. What I need is a page that has specs on the different BIOS or what chip type is in the asus A7A266 so I can research on it more before I fry the chip and need to order a new one. Anyways, thanks for the tips though. But take a look on boards you flash. Check if they are all 256k in size flash files. Curious if these 2M boards are good for 1M chips and vice versa. Thanks!

[Rainbow]

If the board has originally 128KB, it might be able to address 256KB too - depends on the manufacturer - if the extra address pin is connected from the chipset to the socket. Some work, some don't. It will work always the other way (128KB chip on board that can do 256KB).
If you do everything correctly, you will not fry the chip. The most important thing is to insert it correct way into the socket - triple check orientation before inserting.
http://rainbow.ht.st/hardware/hotflash.html
You can use Aflash if you want.

Im curious. If I take my current board with the bios removed from the board and hook a volmeter up to A17 on the socket, I should get a 5V signal back when I apply power to this AT power suppy system since the VCC is 5V, correct? In turn, this would mean my board could infact address the full 256k of the chip?

Next, my A7A266 bios chip is a pheonix chip. Im assuming that its a 5V chip since the board has no BIOS protect (to my knowledge) jumper (maybe BIOS?). Are cross chip burns across brand going to matter? My understanding is as long as pin out and voltage is the same,, it shouldnt matter. But im worried that different chips might use different pins for different things on the chip. (again, im new to the pin layout across different vendors of flash chips).

Sorry for all the question, just this system cost me a replacement board for the customer on which it failed on, I would just like to get to the bottom of this.

In case you dont have time to correspond to this again, just like to say thanks for the tidbit. Cleared some things up for me. Cheers.

[Rainbow]

All the chips have standard pinout (you can see it on my page - address in previous post).
The 5V on the A17 pin does not mean anything. It can be connected to chipset and currently high (which means that the board can address 256KB) or it can be simply pulled up to 5V by a resistor (which means that the board can't address 256KB). The best way to determine the compatibility is to flash 256KB chip - if it succeeds, then it's OK. If you get verify errors in half of the chip and the 2nd half is OK, then it can address only 128KB.

Curious....

Since the bootblock only occupies the first 24k of the bios, does it make sense that if I cant address or burn the full 256, I could tell my aflash to only burn the bootblock so that I could use the bootblock on the A7A board to do the full bios recovery? Dont know if ill have a problem yet (gotta get back home and grab an atx power supply yet), but once I get back, Ill give this all a whirl. Ill definetly let you know how everything turns out.

Well, thanks again Rainbow. Cheers

[Rainbow]

Bootblock is located in last few KBs of the Flash ROM. It depends on the board you're flashing on, if this can be done - if the board does not support 256KB and the A17 pin is pulled high, you should be able to flash top 128KB of the chip (including the bootblock). If the A17 is pulled down or not connected, you will probably see low 128KB (where's no bootblock).