HP Pavilion 6333, SPAXM v1

[Satelites2]

Was working fine except for the drive limitation, HP's site listed the update for it Puma110 file, it contains the PHlash and the rom bios110 file.
Ran it ,no option to save your existing rom bin, it stated sucess, must reboot. Computer hasn't booted up since, no beeps, no video just a quick Keyboard Lights at the very beginning of bootup.

Have searched for another Older rom bin for it, Hp isn't much help there at all. They sugest I take it in to one of thier dealers. It had version 1.01 on it before flashing it. The chip sticker has "PPAM2 1.01" on it. With some thurough searching have found versions "puma2103 & 4" and have tried to Hot Flash it, said ssuccess using uniflash. Have tried to flash all 3 with PHLASH and all it's componets with hot flashing too, but it won't go, citing error can't ID chip.

This board I'm told is a Asus OEM for HP, from what I can see it closly resembles a SP97-xv how ever it's Rom bin is 128K while the Phoenix is 256K, so haven't tried it yet.

What realy irritates me is HP's lack of interest, even in thier web site. I informed them of this problem and after searching within the business side of the forums, I find several posts of the same problems. Now get this, these posts date back to as early as 2000, all are implying the same thing. This was the file they were told to use and Bammm no computer after that. Seems to be alot Like fraud to me! They are in no hury to remove this damaging file either. Wonder what thier agenda is?

Back about 5 months ago I picked up another board very simular to this one at a Computer swap show, it's also a Spax board but this one has the audio built into it and not the micro footprint. It also act the same way the Spaxm 1 board does, wonder who the unlucky person was that time.

Any help would be deeply apreciated, Just need a good rom bin to flash back to it. Satelites2@aol.com

[Ritchie]

If you backed up the old BIOS, then insert a bootable floppy and see if the system looks like it attempts to boot from it. If it does, there are procedures that will let you take advantage of this to recover the previous BIOS.

[Satelites2]

No beeps, video or floppy access indications, also tried with a ISA video w/floppy, still no go. Can write the chip all day, hot swapping cloned it to an award bios board and back, worked fine.

[Ritchie]

Although you probably already have checked this, I would try booting from floppy with no video card, in case the bad BIOS is causing a conflict in this area. You only need a video card for the procedure if you want to be able to see what you are doing with the recovery procedure, which isn't strictly necessary if you set it up properly.

Also, try disconnecting all internals except power connectors, RAM, CPU and floppy cables, and all externals except for power in. Then see if it attempts to do anything with the floppy. Make sure you have the floppy ribbon cable the correct way. Then if that fails plug in the keyboard, try again, wait 30 seconds, then press the key on the keyboard that you usually would press to continue if the BIOS has halted on an error.

Unfortunately I suspect this will all fail but good luck anyway.

[edwin]

"PPAM2 1.01"

used wrong bios, should have been the one for the SPAXM2. If the bios chip is not removeable you can safely ditch the board.

[Satelites2]

This was the sticker tag ("PPAM2 1.01") on the chip, it worked fine before except for the large disk support.

Where would I get this SPAXM2 bios file? Hp doesn't point to any such refference, all my searches at HP comes up with this Puma110 file for the Pavilion 6333.

The Mobo is laying raw on the countertop, has power supply, floppy, keyboard, mouse and monitor connected with 32meg ram installed.
Have tried with and without the isa video board, no go. this board has the jumpers for internal video select and VGA mode select, where shoud they be for possible isa or pci or internal sis video?

[Satelites2]

Have since found out this Mobo isn't the correct board for this model of Pavilion 6333. According to HP this mother board was a refurb replacement for the original SPAX board. The one in this is a SPAX M 1 and was OEM for the Pavilion 44XX series. Would of been nice had they made note of this on thier Bios update for the 6333.

So I now need a bios for a pavilion 44XX, anyone?

[Satelites2]

I have now recovered the floppy that originaly wrote the bad bios, and come to find out it saved the current version 101 before it wrote the 110 version. I've applied this using uniflash and it reports no errors using the Hotflash method. But it still won't get past the initial post check, no video or floppy access tries either, using a ISA video card and a ISA floppy controller. I've even been able to run the PHlash.exe with this recovered 101Bios.rom, writes it too (hotflashing) with no errors.
Still no completion of Post. Acts as if the bootblock is not functioning from what I can see, But writing this chip in unitflash with write Bootblock works too, decyphered the bootblock from the bios file using Hexedit. It appears to be the last 8k of this file. Have saved is as 101bios.boo for uniflash.

My questions are: Is this the actual bootblock, the last 8k of a phoenix bios, writes fine?

What program to use to disasseble the bios file for making comparisons to another for structure?

Any help on this

[ie]

SPAXM

[ie]

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/personal_computing ... ma2104.exe
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/personal_computing ... ma2103.exe