Old Acer/Aopen -- flasher mismatch

Discusses BIOS flashers and utilities from Award, AMI and Uniflash
Post Reply
DanceMan
BIOS Rookie
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Sep 23, 2002 12:19 am
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

I'm trying to flash tlhe bios on an old Acer/AOpen motherboard, an AP5C, which is an early Pentium Classic 430FX chipset board. The board has an AMI bios, but the Acer/AOpen flasher utility is an Award. I'd rather have an Award bios than AMI anyway.
I do have the correct bios, haven't mis-identified the board. Should I use Uniflash?
so many parts, so little time.....
DanceMan
BIOS Rookie
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Sep 23, 2002 12:19 am
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

Update:
I used Uniflash, but still got error messages. The first was that the file size did not match the flash rom (file size is 126kb, flash rom is 128kb). Second was that the file or part of it could not be read. I tried again with a second download of the bios file with the same result.
I continued anyway, flashing the boot block also, but it wouldn't boot after. I used a second bios chip and did the hot flash, and eventually reflashed the original chip with the bios from the second because it was 3 versions later (but still AMI).
I flashed the boot block also because the desired bios is Award (or at least the flasher from the AOpen site for this board and bios is Award).
so many parts, so little time.....
NickS
BIOS Bodhisattva
Posts: 3145
Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 10:34 am
Location: Thames Valley, UK

Well hot-flashed, that man. 126KB should have rung alarm bells, the BIOS will always be 128KB*2^n. Possibly an incomplete download ?
DanceMan
BIOS Rookie
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Sep 23, 2002 12:19 am
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

"I tried again with a second download of the bios file with the same result."
______________________________________

That's the only bios upgrade I could find, probably a year apart between downloads. I was lucky to have several of those motherboards so I could hotflash.
so many parts, so little time.....
Denniss
BIOS Guru
Posts: 3153
Joined: Thu Mar 21, 2002 8:16 pm
Location: Near Hannover (CEBIT) Germany
Contact:

I hope you did not try to flash the 126KB .exe file into your flashrom as it's a compressed file containing flashprog and Biosimage and readme files

ftp://ftp.aopen.com.tw/pub/bios/ap5c
edwin
The Hardware Archivist
Posts: 6286
Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

hotflash time...
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
DanceMan
BIOS Rookie
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Sep 23, 2002 12:19 am
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

"I hope you did not try to flash the 126KB .exe file into your flashrom as it's a compressed file containing flashprog and Biosimage and readme files"
____________________

Doh!
so many parts, so little time.....
edwin
The Hardware Archivist
Posts: 6286
Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

well, do it again, this time with the actual flashfile (don't unpack .bin files!)
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
Post Reply