Motherboard dead, hot-swapping isn't working

Neo@TheMatrix

I've a system with the following configuration.

Celeron 300 MHz, overclocked to 416 MHz
Intel i440LX chipset
Winbond W29EE011 bios chip
Award BIOS version 4.51 PG
Intel740 8MB AGP card.

My AGP card works with i740 VGA BIOS version 212, while there are more updated version available. I downloaded them and tried to patch one of them into the card, but that damn flalshing utility doesn't identify the BIOS chip on the card.

Allright, i settled on an alternative. Dangerous, but luring alternative. I thought, that I can patch the VGA BIOS into my motherboard bios. So when my system boots, it'll recognize that a video bios for the AGP card is already present and it'll not try to use the card's bios. After all, many motherboards contain onboard video and the motherboard's bios contains the video bios.

Everything was well until I observed that my motherboard uses a 1Mbit bios and there was hardly any space left in it. So, I used awdbedit to patch the video bios into my motherboard's bios while deleting the awdext.rom file from the bios. And then patched the new file into BIOS chip using awdflash.exe

That done, now my motherboard's dead.

I've tried the hotswapping formula. The other motherboard was having a different chipset but the BIOS chip was same. The BIOS version of the other board was also the same as mine. The problem is that the flashing program freezes after asking the source bios filename.

Now please, if anyone of you ladies or gentlemen can tell me what my alternatives are, i'd be really really grateful to you.

In the end, I must really appreciate your consistency, for you've reached the end of my query.

Sorry for any mistakes in the english. I'm improving, please help me by pointing mistakes, if you encounter any.

KenH · Chip off the ol' block Joined: 30 Mar 2005 Posts: 104

Not sure what program you're using to flash the chip on your other
board, If I'm not at home, & forced to do a hotflash, I start by trying it
with a couple of different uniflash builds...
Failing that, I dig around for an early 439TX chipset P1 board...
Don't know why, but for some reason they seem to be the most
compatible boards for hotflashing another boards chip...
Before I had a programmer, I used to have a PC chips M550 board
here setup on a peice of laminated timber, & had successfully flashed
around 90% of all chips tried in it, even 2mb one's...

cp · Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 8:13 am Post subject:

use uniflash for hotflashing. start the program, replace the chip, redetect the chip and flash the unmodified bios in.

oh, and btw. i don't know why you tired to flash the i740 video bios in the first place but i heavily doubt that you will notice any difference (on anything!) with a new version, except for the version string obviously.
_________________
If you email me include [WIMSBIOS] in the subject.