BIOS Updates forum

Thanks - I'm going to try it tomorrow. I'll let you know if (and how) it works!

Aragorn

Hi Denniss, thanks for your reply - I didn't find this file because I only looked at Epox' international website (thought that anything available should be available from there). The file you posted a link to seems to belong to the Epox model 6 VBA (look at the file name!), which is a slot-1 board b...

Hi there! I just got this board; the writing on it identifies it as an Epox EP-3VBA. I'm going to connect a 60-GByte-or-larger drive to this board (60 GByte are sufficient, more would be nice); but when trying to detect the the connected hard drive the BIOS hangs. Running the built-in IDE HDD Auto D...

Sure - you never know how stupid the person you are talking to really is. ;-) In the meantime I tried to program the BIOS chip with the new patched BIOS using Uniflash on MS-DOS - same result as before: The first half of the chip didn't match the first half of the file during verify. I then took the...

Hello, and thank you - I'll test it as soon as possible. I hoped you meant that with "You'll have to disconnect your HDD to access the floppy" - but it was already clear to me that I would have to flash with no hard drive connected because BIOS hangs during boot-up with the hard drive attached! Arag...

Hello,

64 GByte would be enough. What about the floppy drive - willl the patched BIOS only be able to use it when there is no hard drive attached, or did I get you wrong?

Aragorn

Then a new BIOS patched with a different tool is the only way to solve this problem?

Hi, I don't know which tool was used to modify the BIOS - it is the BIOS ajzchips provided. Booting without keyboard really did the trick (but isn't much fun in the long run) - the system boots up and keeps running when you connect the keyboard after the graphics card has come up. But now the system...

Hello, bad news again: I took the chip to an electronics store to have it programmed with the patched BIOS. Programming went OK, but at home, the BIOS doesn't work - black screen, floppy drive isn't accessed, even with an ISA graphics card that is known to work and after clearing the CMOS RAM. The o...

Hello, I tried booting the "broken" board with the working BIOS taken from the other board (just as described in the FAQ) - it didn't come up; not even to a point where you colud boot DOS from a floppy disk. I think the chipsets are too different (the "broken" board has a VIA VXPro, the other one is...

Hi, and thanks for your support - the methods described in this FAQ article are exactly what I already tried. Boot-Block BIOS doesn't work (Black screen, even with an ISA graphics card, and the floppy drive isn't accessed during boot-up; and according to http://www.amptron.com/documents/Recover.pdf ...

Hello,

Both Uniflash and awdflash identified the chip as a Macronix MX28F1000P (128 kByte / 1 MBit, 12V).
Clearing the CMOS RAM after the last attempt to flash the BIOS didn't help - I had the backup battery removed for about two hours while the system not plugged in.

Aragorn

Hello again! Bad news: After Uniflash didn't work, I tried awdflash to write the patched BIOS into the flash chip. This tool told me that the update was completed successfully, rebooted - and the system doesn't come up any more. Black screen, floppy drive isn't accessed, clearing the CMOS RAM didn't...

Hello, that also explains why Uniflash told me that the BIOS I got from PcChips didn't match the board I have. Fortunately I made a backup of the original BIOS before trying the "new" one; I wrote this backup back into the BIOS chip after flashing the other BIOS had failed, so I didn't trash the boa...

Hello everybody, I was given an old pentium-based system where a board with the BIOS ID mentioned above is installed. Using the PcChips Lottery I could find out that it is a PcChips M537 (also known as Amptron PM8400A) Rev. 5.1. The board recognizes only 8 GByte of the 45 GByte drive I attached; the...