Bios bootblock checksum error, would greatly appreciate help

Hot-swapping and Boot-Block flash & Boot block flash and floppy support
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smashy
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Joined: Sun Nov 24, 2002 11:22 am

Hello,
My computer crashed playing a movie. I rebooted, and got the "Award bios bootblock v1.0 bios rom checksum error". I followed the advice in your faq and forums and tried to flash my bios with the bootable floppy autoexec.bat flash utility script trick (using the vendor award flash utility for my mb - flashv73), but during the flash process, for the 1st 14 blocks of the write (out of 64) the progress bar is red and the text below reads "write fail"(and moves very slowly), until it hits the 15th block, from which point on the bar is white and the text below reads "write ok".
I have a Tyan trinity 400 - s1854, with a via apollo pro 133a chipset, an award bios, and the syncmos 9950 f29c51002t-90pc bios chip. The board manual has no mention of a bios protect jumper, and also no mention of a bios bootblock protect jumper. Supposedly the bootable floppy trick would take care of any in-bios bootblock protection, and the fact that it writes anything at all indicates there is no bios write protect on. The readme for uniflash indicates that it hangs while flashing this model of syncmos bios chip, so I can't use that.
Any help you guys can provide would be great, thanks.
Rainbow
The UniFlasher
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Try using UniFlash to flash the chip http://www.pppr.sk/rainbow/programs.html#UniFlah
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
smashy
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Joined: Sun Nov 24, 2002 11:22 am

In the changelog for uniflash as well as in the readme it mentions not working on this bios chip (make and model in above message), so I'm afraid to use it (this is all mentioned in the original message). If this has changed, please let me know for sure. Otherwise, any other help would be great. Do you suggest trying a different flasher (again, cant use uniflash due to rainbow's own precautions), and if so, which one?
Rainbow
The UniFlasher
Posts: 3122
Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 4:16 pm
Location: Slovakia
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Oh yes, that's damn SyncMOS. It causes "garbage on the screen and hang" problem with UniFlash. Bad news for you: these chips go bad sometimes.
You can also try GigaByte's "Universal Flashing Utility" which is some version of AMIFlash http://www.giga-byte.com/support/bios.htm
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
smashy
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Joined: Sun Nov 24, 2002 11:22 am

ok; is there a list of the bios chips and such that the gigabyte flasher supports somewhere? (no readme in the download) If it has trouble with the syncmos too I would really like to know ahead of time...
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