Dead VIA EPIA mobo.

[JayKaye]

Firstly, I just found this site and ive been trying to fix my BIOS for a few days now. This site is GREAT! well done. Im from the mp3car.com website and ill be recommending these forums in the forums there, whether I find a solution for my problem or not. Good work guys

ok, heres the prob, I have a VIA EPIA mobo (the sort with built in EVERYTHING except RAM). The BIOS chip is a SST MPF 39SF020. A BIOS upgrade failure killed the mobo. I tried many many many times to hot-swap the chip into 1 of my other 3 machines but it doesnt work! GAH!
ok this is what ive done so far.

I have my main PC with another SST BIOS chip in it (SST 49LF020), I have 2 spare BIOS chips aswell as the failed VIA chip (Winbond W49F002UP12B and SST 39SF020A). I tried booting the main PC (its an ASUS mobo) and running its aflash.exe flasher. I couldnt get it to flash any chip other than the one already in there. I also tried AWARD, AMI and Uniflash but to no avail (I used the -force and -expert parameters for uniflash so it gets the right chip).

Something weird happened and my main PCs BIOS died on me too. No idea how but now it wont boot.

My 2nd attempt was with another machine (Compaq Presario 6000 series PC with a MS-6553 mobo, it also had an SST BIOS, dunno model number).
I used all flashers but uniflash wouldnt work on any of the chips EXCEPT the one from my main pc (the ASUS mobo)! I flashed the ASUS BIOS onto it and even though it said it was flashed successfully, it didnt work in the mobo. I then flashed the VIA BIOS onto it and it didnt work in the VIA either! I had no idea why.... then I came accross this site and I did some reading, now I know that there is no 1 standard for BIOS chips and some use different voltage and reading/writing ways.

Now I have 2 dead mobos and 4 BIOS chips.
SST MPF 39SF020 from the VIA board
SST 49LF020 from the ASUS board
Winbond W49F002UP12B which is a spare
SST 39SF020A which is a spare

Do I need to buy a new chip? my local electronics store sells SST 49LF020 for $15/each ($AU).

Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post. I hope I didnt leave
anything out.

EDIT:
Some more info on the mobos.

VIA mobo is an VIA EPIA M10000 aka EPIA M. ( http://www.viaembedded.com/product/epia ... boardId=81 )

ASUS mobo is an ASUS A7V266-E ( http://support.asus.com/download/downlo ... uage=en-us )

Compaq Presario is a 6000 series PC (not sure which model) but the mobo is an MS-6553.

[JayKaye]

Can anyone help with this please?

[KURIAKI]

Maybe your local store has an EPROM burner.

[JayKaye]

thanks for the reply I was able to fix the problem. I posted up the solution on mp3car.com forums, it is as follows:



ust a follow-up on this thread. I was able to [finally] fix the problem.
After MUCH MUCH MUCH frustration I found that the BIOS chips arent a standard, as I thought it was. There are different ways to write to the chips (LLC and PP i think) aswell as them running on different voltages (3v, 5v and i think 3.7v). To top it off they come in diff sizes, although the most common is 256k and its hard to find a diff size really.
So basically I had to replace my BIOS with the same chip or something with the same specs and not only that, the mobo had to be similar too!!! (correct voltage and way it writes to chip). To add to the mix the program you used to flash needs to have an option to force a BIOS onto the incorrect chip (using a diff mobo with a diff bios chip in it for my carpc).

The solution was this. I borrowed my friends VIA EPIA (800Mhz model, as opposed to my M10000, it had a sliiightly diff model BIOS chip but luckily it still worked). Using Awards flash utility I tried flashing it but it wouldnt let me (wrong BIOS version for mobo). I used the switch /QI to force the flash. The final command was something like this: awfl823b i0100116.bin /py/QI

So yeh, all good now thanks for the help guys.

oh btw, I found a GREAT site for BIOS stuff.
http://www.wimsbios.com/

There forums are here:
http://www.wimsbios.com/forum

Hopefully this thread will save A LOT of hassles for someone else