ALADDIN5-2A5KKSMAC-00 upgrade

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markbush
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My motherboard is supposed to be a Jamicon 586A-AT. 586A-AT is silk screened between the 2nd and 3rd PCI slots.

Additional information is that I found my motherboard's BIOS String ALADDIN5-2A5KKSMAC-00 identified on Wim's Bios Page as the SuperPower SP-A586B motherboard. Apparently this MB sold under the San Li, Hope Vision, Super Power and Jamicon brand names.

The BIOS is identified as Award Ver 4.51PG Release 19981030-0
The serial number on the Award BIOS chip is S/N 115123221 and it is identified by BIOS Wizard as a 128KB BIOS on a 1Megabit chip.
ALADDIN5-2A5KKSMAC-00 is the BIOS string identifier.

The BIOS I want for this machine is on the www.hongen.com web site as file
a586b-a9.zip
and is listed as about 141KB. The first three available BIOSs are listed as a586b-a6.zip, a586b-a7.zip and a586b-a8.zip and are less than 128KB.

This fits in with the Ver 3.3-66 ALADDIN5-2A5KKF9BC-00 BIOS on my RedFox motherboards being identified by Bios Wizard as a 256KB BIOS on a 2Megabit chip. Under Fordlian/RedFox there are four Award BIOSs identified for the Aladin V chip set. Ver 1.4, Ver 1.6, Ver 3.3_33 and Ver 3.3_66. I am sure that the last two implement DMA 33 and DMA 66 modes respectively. The first ones go on a 1Megabit chip and the last one goes on a 2Megabit chip.

From the Chinese and Anglo characters on the Hongen web site I can figure out that the earliest BIOS doesn't support the AMDK6-III and AMDK6-2+. I also guess that the more recent BIOSs support the DMA 33 and DMA 66 modes of the IDE Controller and probably additional SDRAM memory configurations.

>Similar motherboards with the ALI chipset run ATA 66 HDs. The example is I have other REDFOX AGP-ALI Rev F motherboards with the same chipset using bios ALADDIN5-2A5KKF9BC-00 WITH SAME ALI chipset that run ATA 66. My one Jamicon board with bios ALADDIN5-2A5KKSMAC-00 ONLY RUNS udma MODE 5 WITH THE SAME DRIVES. oN THE redfox BOARDS THE ide hd CONNECTOR HAS ONE PIN REMOVED IN THE CENTER to connect the ATA66 cable. I know the board originally did not support ATA66 and was built with ordinary IDE connector and later after the BIOS change they just resorted to snipping the center pin.
>
Rainbow
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It should be SuperPower SP-A586B.
These BIOSes are the latest for SP-A586B (there are more versions of this board):
128KB - version A.5 - "11/04/1998-ALADDIN5-2A5KKSMAC-00" - http://www.adhoc.de/mainbo/Treiber/A586B-A5.zip
128KB - version A.7 - "09/01/1999-ALADDIN5-2A5KKSMCC-00" - http://www.adhoc.de/mainbo/Treiber/A586B-A7.zip
256KB - version A.9 - "11/29/1999-ALADDIN5-2A5KKSMCC-00" - http://www.nix.ru/support/drivers.html? ... &vendor=20

It's possible that versions A.6 and up are not for your board version.
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
markbush
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Thank you for the Russian download site URL. Exactly what I needed. The Taiwan SuperPower site is down.

ACORP also sells a similar ALI V SS7 MB but with 2 SIMM and 2 DIMM and on their web site they say:

5ALi61 Ver: V1.3a 1MB Flash Rom

5ALi61 Ver: V1.4 1MB Flash Rom

5ALi61 Ver: 2.2_33 2MB Flash Rom For "ALI M1543C A1" south bridge chipset

5ALi61 Ver:3.3_66 2MB Flash Rom For "ALI M1543C B1" south bridge chipset

RedFox / FordLian sells this board and sold it a number of years especially in India where it went through upgrades losing its' SIMM slots. They have the same 4 BIOSs available and all they do to implement 3.3_66 LIKE MY 2 REDFOX boards is use a 2Megabit flash ROM chip and remove the necessary pin in the 2 IDE connectors on the MB so you can install the necessary DMA 66 ribbon cable.

My Superpower / Jamicon MB has the ALI M1543C B1 south bridge chip but I hated to try using the RedFox BIOS because the SP / Jamicon MB uses a different version of the UMC I/O chip. I wanted to get a SuperPower BIOS in case the difference in the I/O chip made the RedFox BIOS unsuitable.

I can find a 2 Megabit chip at a local surplus place and I can remove the necessary pin in the IDE connector.
edwin
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Please let us know of the results of your experiments. There might be other people around with the same board, the same question but no flash bios to spare... TIA.
markbush
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It turns out to be a royal Pain in the Ass to change different sized flash rom bios chips if you can't get a chip that is supported by UNIFlash.

In order to flash the latest BIOS I have to replace the 1MBit chip with a 2MBit chip. I have found surplus ASD AE29F2008 to be available here.

The ASD AE29F2008 came surplus out of an unknown computer using an AWARD 686 BIOS. I'm sure that I will need to overwrite the ASDs BOOTBLOCK BIOS in order to make it compatible with my ALADDIN5 M1542 A1/M1543 B1 chip set. The AMI or AWARD flash utilities will not overwrite the BOOTBLOCK BIOS.

UNIFlash has support for the ASD AE29F1008 FLASH ROM Chip
*AE29F1008 = Winbond W29EE011 | 128KB
but doesn't list the 2MBit ASD AE29F2008 FLASH ROM Chip.

Unless I can get a version of UNIFlash that supports the 2MBit ASD chip I will have to take the UNIFlash list of supported 256 KByte chips to the surplus house and start peeling back the labels on all of the available surplus chips until I find one that is supported.
Rainbow
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I think that ASD AE29F2008 should be detected as Winbond W29C020. Have you tried it?
Let's continue here http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=55
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
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