Biostar Award Bios confusion and question - I'm desperate!

[rw]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question but I've looked everywhere and I'm still very confused. I want to update my Award bios so that it will recognize a hard drive greater than 8MB. (I've had many problems with EZ-BIOS and my disk suddenly not being recognized by the system, etc, so I want to be rid of it) I've lost my hard drive for the second time this month because of EZ-BIOS. My current drive is 40 GB.

My bios information is:
Award BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
Award ID-String: 07/14/1998-i440LX-2A69JB0DC-00
Board/BIOS-Version: TLC0714P CTX COMPUTER

After all the warnings, I don't know what information I need - I go to the Biostar site which made my board, and it doesn't have much by way of explanation. Since my system is old, do I need an older upgrade, or will the current one work? Are there different upgrades for different chipsets and dates manufactured, or does the latest Award upgrade work for all of them? If I need a specific one, where do I find it?

I downloaded awdflash.exe from the Biostar site, but the instructions tell me to boot up from a floppy with dos and no autoexec.bat, or config.sys - which is another problem for me to find - I hope it means I just need command.com on a disk.

Is awdflash.exe all I need for this upgrade?

Thanks!
Maria

[Rainbow]

a) Read the FAQ.
b) The board is Biostar M6TLC. Patched BIOS with support for HDDs up to 128GB is available at http://wims.rainbow-software.org/

[rw]

I did read the Faq, I don't see the part where it says that the most current Award bios replaces all of them. Maybe I missed it. Can you point me to it please? I don't need supersize HDD support, just for 40GB, I will check out your link

Thanks for your reply,
Maria

[Rainbow]

Each board requires its own BIOS. There's nothing like latest Award BIOS

[rw]

Ok, see this is where I'm confused. I had already looked at the link you posted and found the reference you told me about, but I didn't know if my OEM ID string is supposed to match (it doesn't) What is supposed to match and what doesn't matter? Since you pointed me to it, I'll take your word for it, but I couldn't find information on what was important and what wasn't. I'd just like to know for my own future reference how to figure this out on my own. There are so many parts to consider.

Is a new bios in general usable on older systems? The biostar site doesn't say, it just gives you one file.

Thanks,
Maria

[Rainbow]

OEM manufactuerer can change the OEM string to its own. The ID string should match. However - some board manufacturers use the same ID string for more boards. Biostar uses the first three letters of the OEM string to identify board model - TLC in your case which means M6TLC board.

[rw]

If there is a faq addressing my following question, please just point me to it, but I wasn't able to find one after many hours of searching.

I guess I don't understand the system in general. I'll give you a scenario.
I'm a manufacturer. I make my first board A using a certain chipset I'll call 1. I give the bios the identifier A1. Now what happens when I start using chipset 2 or what if I modify only small parts of the motherboard? Do I write a new bios A2 or use the same one? If I write a new bios, what happens to A1? Do I keep upgrading the A1 bios perpetually into the future? That would mean the prospect of keeping thousands of different configurations updated with new BIOSes as time goes on and I make different motherboards. At what point does the manufacturer stop writing upgrades for A1? Maybe I'm not understanding some crucial fact.

The thing that got me started on this was the fact that Biostar only has ONE Award bios upgrade file (awflash.exe) on their site, as if all their boards can use the current bios. How do you explain that?

Thanks, Maria

[Rainbow]

Example:
You want to make board with i440LX chipset. You buy a BIOS core from Award for i440LX chipset. If you're Biostar, you'll get manufacturer code B0. You design and make the board, then modify the BIOS to match the board. The first board with this chipset will have 2A69JB09C (example). Then you will make another board with i440LX chipset. You modify the BIOS again and give it 2A69JB0AC ID. As a part of customer support, you will update both these BIOSes to fix compatibility issues, bugs, etc. for some period of time (depends on you how long - the best support has Asus).

Awdflash is flasher - a utility used to flash (update) Award BIOSes (which are .BIN files).

[rw]

Thank you very much for that clarification. That helped alot! I wonder how you find each individual bios upgrade (.bin file) on that Biostar site, as I couldn't figure it out. Wimsbios seems to have the right link though, as you pointed out earlier, I wonder why Biostar can't manage to list those in a logical place? Anyway thank you!

Maria

[Rainbow]

http://www.biostar.com.tw/support/bios/index.php3

[Wayne]

The AWDFLASH.EXE is only an execute file. The actual BIOS update will be a file ending with either .rom or .bin or .grd. To upgrade the BIOS you will need to get the latest Bios file for your specific motherboard. To install, create a bootable disk with whatever operating system you have. Delete the config and autoexec files from it. Copy the AWDFLASH.EXE file and XXXXXXX.XXX (whatever your BIOS file is named) files to it. Place the disk in drive and turn on power. At the command prompt (A:\ ) type AWDFLASH XXXXXXX.XXX (use all uppercase when entering ) and press enter. You will be taken to a new window. Follow the onscreen instructions. (When asked if you want to save the old bios file, say YES). Install new BIOS, remove disk, save and reboot.