MSI K7T266-Pro2 RU BIOS update fail, recovery fail.

Hot-swapping and Boot-Block flash & Boot block flash and floppy support
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kraz
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I've got a MSI K7T266 Pro2 RU ( raid / usb2.0 ) mobo. I probably flashed it with the wrong BIOS, and now the board is dead.

What is curious is the POST, i get no video but 2 very short beeps and 8 short beeps. ( CMOS shutdown register r/w error ? can I battle this ? )

The typical amibios solution, Ctrl+Home + Amibios.rom on the FDD brings no results ( alhtough the 4 beeps - flash complete - were there. And I used the right bios that time. and various other ( older ) versions of it ). The backuped BIOS file produces the same results ( 10 beeps on post, board dead ). After some time, during the FDD "blind flash" the board started to produce two longer beeps in intervals and would fail to flash. Cleared the CMOS.
The Diagnostic LED's on the board light up in
<red><red><red><green>

I would really appreciate any suggestions.
capisi
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Kraz,
Try the following and if it doesn't work try the folks at www.badflash.com They have been helpf ... uration.
NickS
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capisi wrote:You can just about bet on it if you peel back the sticker on your chip and find it is made by MX or ASD or marked with an H.T and then a string of numbers. Only about 1 out of 10 of these chips will take a reflash due to their poor quality.
Capisi - can you prove these statistics ? If not, please change the wording of this standard text. Otherwise we'll change it for you. You have been asked before.
badflash
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capisi is quoting text from my response to him. The statements about MX and ASD and HT chips is based on our personal experience with these chips. HT are Hsing Tech house marked MX chips like the MX28F1000.

When these are sent to us to be reflashed they are nearly always unusable. In the case of the 2meg chips they nearly always have a locked bootblock. Once locked that portion of the chip can not be updated. This means that if the bios update requires the bootblock to be updated, that flash will always fail.

We don't hear about the ones that work, only the ones that don't. I can tell you that chips from other makers like Winbond, SST, AMD, Intel do not suffer anything close to this sort of failure rate.

I hope this answers your question about this. I'm not sure what sort of documentation you need as proof.

http://www.badflash.com
NickS
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@badflash: I'm happier now that I know the origin of this text and that it comes from someone with personal experience - I'd prefer it if the wording was "1 in 10 of the chips that we see at Badflash", if that is what you're saying.
badflash
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What I am saying is that I can not remember the last time we successfully reflash a 1 meg ASD, HT or MX chip. The vintage of these chips is such that they were designed for no more than 1000 cycles and most were designed for only 100 cycles. That may seem like a lot, but every time you change a driver, or get a panic reboot the ESCD update in the bios. Some older bios files update the ESCD on every boot (message is ESCD update successful)

Only 1 out of 10 of the 2Meg ASD and MX chips will properly reflash due to the locked bootblock issue, and in some cases, PCCHIPS has removed support for those chip in the latest bios file, so it amounts to the same thing. In this particular case of chip not supported you may get an "unknown flash type" message followed by any number of bogus messages such as "disable USB" or simply a flashing cursor and that is it. Clearing the CMOS will allow you to repeat the process, but not to recover. We have found by experimentation and looking at the chips that PCCHIPS is using on newer motherboards what chip they do support.

Bottom line is that if you see ASD, HT or MX printed on your chip, you are rolling the dice with long odds.
http://badflash.com
badflash
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A6380VMS.370 is the correct file for this board. The MS-6380 has all sorts of versions and you must only use the information printed on the motherboard to determine what you have and there is a k7t266 Pro, k7t266 Pro2, k7t266 Pro2-A, k7t266 Pro2-RU, etc.

Be sure you are using the backup file from where you started, and not the file you think is the correct one. ALWAYS save your old file before you update. It may be your olny way to recover.

ALWAYS clear the cmos before you reboot with the updated image. If your recovery works you will see the PC read the floppy, after about 4 minutes you will hear 4 beeps, this means the transfer is done. Clear the CMOS after unplugging, then power back up and enter CMOS setup.

If this board came from a "major" computer maker like HP, Compaq, Gateway, etc. our experience shows that these are non-standard boards and the MSI bios will not work in them. I got an MS-6630 ver 2.1 for $5 at a computer show that had been flashed with a stock MSI bios, and the Gateway file worked like a charm.

http://www.badflash.com
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