flash to death

[jimjones]

Hi,

i mistakingly flashed the wrong bios to my mobo.

specs:

MSI K7 pro (ms 6195)
Bios chip : winbond w29c020(cp90b)

current bios : ms 6191 (MSI)

After clearing CMOS i can start the pc once (f2 for cmos defaults - can't change anything in bios setup because after reboot i have to clear cmos again)

I tried to flash again with the right bios and here is where the trouble starts:
amiflash(826) says the chipset isn't supported / flash part isn't supported
So i tried it with ctrl-home and a disk with amiboot.rom - doesn't seem to work (some disk activity - then nothing)

I tried uniflash - has problem to find rom on startup - rescan detects right chip
Try to flash (without bootcode) - it says the bootcode is corrupt so i let it flash that too - goes real slow(some red blocks show up in progress bar) then verification fails.

Anybody any ideas?

[jimjones]

ok here's the log from an attempted flash:

00:15:46.31: UniFlash v1.40 started: A:\UNIFLASH.EXE -force da45 -e a6195kms.180 -log
00:15:47.51: Chipset detected: AMD 750
00:15:48.28: Flat Real Mode initialized
00:15:49.11: CMOS size detected: 256b
00:15:49.88: Found DMI 2.2 board info: MSI MS-6191
00:15:50.70: VIA/AMD method: reg $40 = C0002101
00:15:51.47: VIA/AMD method: reg $40 changed to C0002101
00:15:52.29: System ROM selected
00:15:53.06: Allocating memory block 00040000
00:15:53.89: Allocating memory block 00040000
00:15:54.65: Allocating memory block 00000080
00:15:56.91: Flash ROM chip forced: Winbond W29C020(C)/022/5V
00:15:57.29: Flash ROM ID: 0000,0000
00:15:58.23: Entering emergency mode
00:15:59.98: Flashing BIOS including BootBlock
00:17:02.82: Flashing 262144b long BIOS image to 0
00:17:07.16: Flashing failed
00:17:07.93: Exiting UniFlash...
00:17:08.75: VIA/AMD method: restoring reg $40 from C0002101
00:17:09.52: Turning off logging, shutting down to real mode
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
is it because of the board id (uniflash thinks it's a ms6191) that it won't work?
chipset and rom chip are right, so..

[Rainbow]

Looks like the board has some write protection. The original BIOS can disable the protection when AMIFLASH tell it to do so. But the wrong BIOS can't do it because MS-6191 uses some other (or none at all) write protection method.

Awdflash has a feature that can execute the code needed to unprotect the flash ROM from BIOS image file instead of system BIOS. Maybe AMIFLASH has something like that too. If not, you have to remove the chip and flash it elsewhere.

[jimjones]

Ok, thanks.

Back to amiflash it is.
I seem to be missing 1 vital piece of information, i.e. the flash part nr
It has a manufacturer (intel, amd, winbond,...) and a number (29...,39...,49...,)

Any idea where I can find this (I have been looking all over my motherboard, but no luck)?

[jimjones]

Hmm,

seems it is (almost) the same as the flash rom chip id.
But still the flash won't work.

So, anybody knows an affordable bios flashing sevice (preferably in Belgium) or somewhere i can buy a pci - isa card to flash a plcc (i guess : pins on 4 sides, right?)

[lucske74]

You must use Ami flash ! for the msi 6195 board !http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/d ... =94&kind=1
If you near Tienen lives I will try it to hotflashes on another msi 6340 with amibios. So let me know.

[jimjones]

If you near Tienen lives I will try it to hotflashes on another msi 6340 with amibios

Bedankt, ben zelf van Gent(niet echt bij de deur). Ga eerst nog's proberen met floppy & isa multi-io kaart.
Het is wel een plcc 'tje (pinnekes aan 4 kanten) ik weet niet of dat past op uw mobo, en ik zou er ook niet verantwoordelijk voor willen zijn dat uw mobo naar de knoppen gaat (heb zelf nog nooit 'hot geflashed')

[lucske74]

Klopt idd , het is een plcc32 chip , en geen nood , dat gebeurt niet als je het programma amiflash 841 gebruikt . Heb er trouwens al een paar geflasht zonder incidenten , als je maar weet wat je aan het doen bent

[jimjones]

Ok, verder via pm? of email (kijk in je pm)

[Ritchie]

You have all lost me on which flashing utility is best to use in this situation, but my suggestion is based on what Rainbow said about write protection - enter into the BIOS setup, look for a write protection option, disable it. Then exit and save. Save even if the write protection already appeared to be disabled because the option may not have been set properly. If you get this far and can still boot then my advice would be to re-attempt the flash with UniFlash. Reason being because from what I have read so far UniFlash seemed to work best apart from the write protection problem. If you can not boot after exiting and saving BIOS or have other undesirables, then take the battery out and let the CMOS lose it's data.

Hope this helps.

[jimjones]

thx for the help all (especially lucske74 for doing a hotswap flash for me)

as for the unlocking of the eeprom, didn't work whatever flasher with whatever option i tried (one had an unlock option - uniflash?)

Later i downloaded the latest bios from msi again (from here : http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/b ... =94&kind=1) and was gonna try the flash again.
As i had enabled bios tag checking, it warned me about an incorrect one - meaning they're distributing a wrong bios together with a flasher configured to NOT check the bios tag - or am i wrong here?