Biostar M5ATC Rev 1.0 Bios Problem

Questions that don't belong in the other forums.
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alecford
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My problems started when I wanted to put a 40Gb disk with a Biostar M5ATC Board. It hung on autodetect, this I now know is a bug in the original Award Bios. I upgraded to the Bios with the update from the Biostar site but had problems getting into windows (95C & 98), hanging when putting icons on the screen (Eagle S3 375 video card) and I eventually discovered that I could only use 16 bit color or safe mode. Also CD Rom wouldn’t autodetect. I tried to reload the original Bios but the system seemed dead until I discovered about, and got hold, of an ISA video card and reloaded the downloaded Bios. The system worked again but same problems. Then I discovered the updated Bios by th on http://wims.rainbow-software.org. I flashed these and the Video problem went away but I still can’t get at the CD (either a Liteon 32x or Acer 8x4x32). I can access the CD, readonly, if I load MSCDEX.

I have successfully flashed the Biostar update twice and th’s once, the saved original Bios have failed on both tries.

Current situation: th’s Updated Bios 2A5KIB09C-00 , Taken 40Gb drive back to shop, Can’t see CD otherwise OK.

eSupport.com will email me new Unicore Bios for $24.95 (U.S), are they as good as they sound?
I would be happy to have my original Bios again and forget about a disk over 30Gb

Questions:
1. Is it possible that my saved Bios file is corrupted (I was in a DOS box)?
2. Could the Chip be bad in some way causing the failed flashes with the saved original Bios (but then I had 3 good flashes)?
3. Has anyone out there have a good copy of the original Bios (mine dated 2/25/98) that came on the chip.
4. What is the significance of the checksum that comes up in awdflash after flash, should it be a particular value, if so what?

Any Help Appreciated
Alec Ford
Rainbow
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Try loading SETUP defaults. Make sure that jumpers are configured correctly on all IDE devices.
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
KachiWachi
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See my post here in this forum for some help on this board. I do have my original BIOS copy, but the patched version should run fine...

I still have my CDROM DMA issue, but on the last setup I never selected it, so the name in the Device Manager remains OK.
alecford
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I tried Bios setup defaults – several times & various changes to no effect. The physical configuration is unchanged from before Bios upgrades(Primary Master, Secondary Master & CD as Secondary Slave. I should say CD is detected by Bios at startup but not by Windows.

I have also tried various UDMA setting – the default ones worked before upgrade.

KachiWachi: My email address is available, would appreciate a copy of your Bios and I will see what happens and let you know (maybe a day or so before get time to risk being without my computer again).
KachiWachi
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Will do when I get home today.

Note that you shouldn't be using any UDMA modes on this board as it doesn't work...
alecford
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Well KachiWachi sent me his Bios file and it had the same problem as my old file :( , a seemingly good flash (checksum 1fff) but on reboot a Bios checksum error and I needed my ISA video card again to recover.

Should I go and get a new Eprom chip and hot swap & flash if necessary?
Rainbow
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What utility did you use to flash the BIOS?
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
alecford
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I Used the award Flasher, would you suggest something else might be better?
KachiWachi
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AWARD flasher version...???
alecford
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I was using the latest AWDFLASH 7.87d from the Award site.

I maybe should have said thing didn’t go perfectly and the system froze a couple of times in AWDFLASH between saying don’t turn off and actually writing anything so I had to turn off but it all worked out in the end. I had to Flash twice because I forgot to make sure the large disk Bios were on the floppy.
edwin
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Could you please perform a normal straight and complete flash with uniflash please to make sure there's no icky stuff going on in your bios.
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
KachiWachi
The New Guy
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For some reason if UniFlash has trouble (it shouldn't), I'll send you the version of AWARDFLASH I used on my board. 7.87d may be too new for this board...
alecford
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I seem to have solved my problems without needing to try the another flasher.

It seems Windows wasn't recognising/detecting the ALI chipset and when I loaded the drivers from a disk that came with the motherboard all came right with the CD. My 95C did have the chipset drivers and I'm sure I never loaded the disk before as Windows recognised the chipset and loaded them OK. I think I deleted the drivers in the hope of forcing Windows to start afresh and load the disk drivers but for some reason it couldn’t detect the chipset and didn't. KachiWachi also noticed that CTPCI.EXE (a program to detect bios stuff) wasn’t detecting the secondary IDE properly either. I think that this suggests a small bug in the Bios still.

With a working system now :D , with Large disk support that I didn’t have originally, I think I will just forget about the old Bios, and why I couldn’t flash them, and move on.

Thanks for the suggestions
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