Winbond W29C020 & Uniflash & AppleRom's Patch

Discusses BIOS flashers and utilities from Award, AMI and Uniflash
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woolfman2
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I have an Atrend 6310 slot 1 motherboard that uses the 440ZX chipset. In order to support and properly identify additional CPUs (1400 Tulatin Celeron in Powerleap adapter) and possibly allow the use of PCI video cards with greater than 32 meg of memory (board refuses to boot with a PCI Radeon 9100 128 MB card), I patched the lastest available bios for this board with AppleRom's patch, which I have previously utilized successfully with other motherboards. When I flashed the patched BIOS using Awardflash, the flash appeared succeed, however, on bootup after clearing the CMOS, I was left with a totally dead motherboard (no boot block). I then used Uniflash with another motherboard to hotflash back the original BIOS to the Atrend BIOS chip (Winbond 29C020). I reinstalled the chip back in the Atrend board, and the board lived again. However, my goal of adding additional CPU and video card support was not achieved.

I decided to dig a bit further, and attempted to use Uniflash to flash the patched bios. Uniflash reported a boot block mismatch, so I entered the Advanced menu and selected flash with bootblock. Using this approach, the write part of the flash of the patched bios appeared to succeed (all green blocks), however, the verification pass reported an error (green X in the very last block). I then attempted to flash back the original unpatched bios using Uniflash and was successful with the write and verification passes and the motherboard remained alive after reboot.

Based on these results, I have a few questions:

1. Is the X in the last block during the verification pass of Uniflash with the patched bios an indication that the write protect bit has been set on the Winbond chip and is preventing a successful write and verification of the patched Bios? I ask this, as a problem with write protection of the Winbond chip is mentioned in the Uniflash documentation.

2. Can I replace the old Winbond chip with a new Atmel AT29C020 chip, which I could then hotflash with the patched bios using Uniflash. My local distributor (Arrow) is out of stock on new Winbond chips, however, the Atmel chips are currently available. Although I am not an electronics expert, the two chips appear to have identical pinouts and are both 5V, however, there are some minor differences on current specifications.

One last possibility is, of course, that AppleRoms patch is not compatable with this motherboard. However, until I can successfully flash the patched bios, this possibility cannot be addressed.

Thanks in advance for your input on these matters.
Rainbow
The UniFlasher
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Flashing without boot block does not seem to work correctly all the time. It's possible that I'll remove it.
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
woolfman2
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Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 4:47 pm

I did use the advanced menu in Uniflash and did at least attempt to flash the boot block. Is the X that I get in the last block of the verification pass an indication of write protection of the Winbond chip?
Rainbow
The UniFlasher
Posts: 3122
Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 4:16 pm
Location: Slovakia
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Might be - if you use the option to flash including bootblock and you get this, it's likely to be true.
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
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