Help a non-n00b recover a AMI BIOS 7-beep incorrect flash...

Hot-swapping and Boot-Block flash & Boot block flash and floppy support
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FalconFour
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Hm. Formatting a title is hard.

Okay. Here's my dumb. I have a PC Chips M825LU v7.2 board with a really screwed-up CPU. I bought the CPU on eBay for an unreasonably cheap price... the first chip I received was DOA, so I returned it and exchanged it for another, that POSTed, and that's all I cared about. The board I originally tested it in considered it a Duron (it was an Athlon 2400+ I think), but I thought it was BIOS error. Then, after screwing around with settings, seeing what settings it was stable at, I found that it was actually a modified Athlon with its L2 cache disabled (traces on the board cut), considering it a Duron. Woohoo.

Okay, so I slap this chip in the PCChips board a few months later, because the PCChips board has integrated video and mATX form factor. Cool beans. Well, the board detects it as a Duron 650. And it won't let me change it. Wuh?

I go online to PCChip's site, and enter my board's info - on the board was written "M825", so I choose M825. There was only one version, a 1.2a. That's strange, mine says 7.2a, but it's so similar I figure it was a misprint or something. I download the BIOS, burn a bootable CD out of it, boot it up, and run the flasher. It tells me my old BIOS was made in 2003 and is newer, which I'm like "huh? did they write the wrong BIOS last time?"... so I continue anyway. It flashes OK and I reboot it.

Cue problems. No screen. OK, I figure, it needs to clear the NVRAM. I turn it off and flip the clear jumper. I turn it back on. Still no screen. Er... crap.

I pop in my POSTcard, and find it flittering through all the POST codes. FF, DD, D3, D4, D5, D6, D9, *flitter* 27, FF. And it hangs at FF infinitely. If I hit Reset, it shuts off. Oh, hell... okay. So I Google for how to trigger the boot block recovery mode, because I already know it assumes the BIOS is OK. I first start with the WE+A12 pin shorting (after peeling off the sticker and looking up the data sheet for my BIOS ROM chip), which DOES actually work, to trigger the boot block recovery mode. It accesses the floppy and does some fun stuff. Awesome.

So I load up the board's CORRECT bios as AMIBOOT.ROM on the floppy (a 720k 3.5" disk since that's all I own - they were cheap and reliable! =o ), and fire it up with the pins shorted again (then released). It initializes (code EC), reads (code EE), then begins loading the BIOS ROM from the floppy (code F0, F2, F3...). After it finishes... disaster.

I get code F6, and continuous 7 beep loop, which means (from the AMI beep code description) "No flash EPROM detected". What the crap? Of course it's Flash! It was flashed before, remember? That's how we got here! I even tried it with the incorrect ROM (the one I loaded to get into this mess) on the floppy, and the same thing happens.

I also later learned about the Ctrl+Home trick, but since I have a wireless keyboard, it's not a matter of holding it, it's a matter of repeatedly tapping Ctrl+Home while it cycles through the POST codes. It catches after all the "D" codes are done and gives me an EC code instead of FF, just like shorting the pins.

I'm going to say it's a safe assumption that nobody's ever encountered this problem before. But I've been able to recover a Netgear wireless router from a bad manufacturer flash, using a serial console and some crafty net-booting. PCs have got to have a similar failsafe, right? How come my failsafe's not working right? :(
FalconFour
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Screw it... the low traffic of this board made me lose all hope anyway. I ended up just shorting out the stupid chip when I shorted VCC to Reset on the chip... or something like that. Stupid multimeter probe slipped.

Now all I get is "FF".

Oh well. In the trash the whole thing goes. Stupid CPU. Stupid board. Grr...

edit: Snapping the CPU in half was fun though. Never guessed how the die makes contact with the chip contacts... that's cool. Oh, that felt good. Don't think I'll do the same with the motherboard though. Maybe I can salvage a few good capacitors off it... and stuff... *grr*
beget01
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I'm in a similar situation... I have a PCCHIPS M920L motherboard and upgraded it to the lastest bios 020627s.ROM. Something went wrong after flash. It won't boot anymore. There is no video, no POST, or anything.
If I take out the ram, it gives me 3 long beeps then repeats. So I figure some part of bios is still running. So I made a recovery floppy disk with original bios renamed to AMIBOOT.ROM in it. Holding CTRL-HOME and turned on my computer. A few seconds later, recovery floppy drive starts to load. Sounds good... But after floppy stopped loading, it gives me 7 beeps instead of 4 beeps which means successful. So I looked up on the net, 7 beeps means "No Flash EPROM detected"... huh? I did "flash" to lastest bios and something went wrong... Flash EPROM is definite in it...
So I looked at motherboard. It has 2 jumpers next to the bios chip. One jumper is for 5v/3v. The other is 2MB/4MB. They are set to 5V and 2MB. Does this have anything to do with not detecting Flash EPROM? I tried 3V/2MB.. and other combinations. It didn't work...

Any hope to recover this BIOS/Motherboard???
Thanks for any help!!!
edwin
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remove the sticker with amibios from the flash rom chip and tel us what type number it has, then we'll be able to say what voltage/size it actually is.
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
beget01
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Yes, I did take the sticker off. It's a Winbond 2mb/5V chip. So the jumper was set right. I tried every possible recovery methods... None worked.
So what I did was to took the chip out and did a HOTFLASH, my first time, on an old old Pentium PC I had around. hehe. After carefully put in the messed up bios chip in the old computer, I fired up uniflash 1.40, a life saver. It found the Winbond chip and flashed it. At first, it said failed. So I backed up bios I just flashed to compare to the original. It was different. So I did a second try. It again said verify failed. I did the back up again. This time the most of it was similar to original. Maybe the chip is flaky... Anyway, I turn the old pc off, took out the chip and put it in its own pc. When I turned it on, a few seconds later heard the sweet sound of BEEP. HA. Successful! My first time doing hotflash, it was good! My pc is doing a new OS installation now. hehe

Thanks for looking!
edwin
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If it takes a few times to flash the chip, it is indeed flakey and should be replaced eventually.
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
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