80GB: Biostar M6TBA 1.2

BIOS update, EIDE card, or overlay software? (FAQ Hard disk recognition)
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ALone
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Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Sep 12, 2004 8:28 pm

Hi,
i'm wondering if you could help me with the following:
A very good friend of mine has a Biostar M6TBA 1.2 mobo. This is printed on the mobo itself.
He tried installing a harddisk of 80 GB, but it wasn't regognized.
I found a new (modified?) bios on this site (tba0223b.bin) that should solve the big disk problem, if i'm not mistaken.
That didn't work, he got a failure that said: "The program file’s part number does not match with your system". I suggested to backup his old bios to see how big it is. The bios tba0223b.bin is 128KB big. The backupped one was 256KB! So we tried to flash the bios with a bios (tba1224b.bin) for rev 1.3 or higher that is also 256KB big, but again, no go. He got the same failure. The exact bios name is: "12/17/1998-i440bx-smc60x-2a69kb0ec-00 ". If i look at the biosses and the date's i think i need a newer bios, don't you think? I hope you can look into this matter. Many thanks in advance.
ajzchips
El cheapo dude
Posts: 3048
Joined: Sat Mar 23, 2002 12:41 pm
Location: Madrid, Spain

The 128KB version is:
TBA0223B: 02/23/1999-i440BX-SMC60X-2A69KB0CC-00
The 256KB version is:
TBA1124B: 11/24/1999-i440BX-SMC60X-2A69KB0CC-00

So either they did change a letter in their BIOS ID string (making the flasher complain), or you have an OEM version.

Please post the BIOS message, too. Use BIOS AGENT and post the results here. http://www.unicore.com/biosagent/index.cfm
Rainbow
The UniFlasher
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Location: Slovakia
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There's older 256KB version called TBA1217B with the 2A69KB0EC string.
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
Ritchie
BIOS Guru
Posts: 761
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2002 5:17 am

I believe Uniflash makes it easier to allow forced flashing where the Award software is more likely to block your path and stop you.

I assume you are using Award.

If you are sure that you have the correct BIOS despite the warnings, including being sure of having the correct image size to flash, you could use Uniflash and attempt to flash the image through there. Make sure you do a backup though, so that you have a reasonable chance of recovery in the case that you do have the wrong BIOS.

Hope I have managed to help you - I will be interested in any results if you proceed.
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