Need help understanding the bios

Only for programmers and BIOS gurus with technical questions.
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Joined: Tue Nov 24, 2009 4:04 am

I have a Asus P5E3 .It had a soldered on soic chip. It now has a soic8 socket.

Setting up the board [no case] I got an error message after " checking nvram"
It said "Not enough space in Runtime area. SMBios data will not be available " Press F1 OR DEL

So I ran AFUDOS and updated the bios. pull battery, change jumper, pull plug from wall socket. Then put it all back together and boot- updated bios version but the same error message.

So I ran AFUDOS with the switches pbnc. It then erased the bootblock and tried ten times to write to the bootblock -failed. Rebooted
same procedure with battery etc. but the m/b wouldnt post . dead m/b.
Changed the chip [programmed with v610] and the m/b is up and running. I'm typing on it right now.
Is nvram a different name for bootblock?
Is Runtime area part of the bios chip?
Is SMBios a different name for nvram or bootblock?
Using a parallel chip burner [Willems or Nano] , will it erase the whole chip like afudos /pbnc ?
Hope this makes sense. :)
edwin
The Hardware Archivist
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Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Netherlands
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looks like the original soic chip was bad from the beginning, that happens sometimes.

nvram: non-volatile ram, memory cells that remain intact after powering off
runtime area: most likely the memory cells that are used during the execution of the bios routines, no idea where they are located/allocated
SMbios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_BIOS

yep that will entirely replace the contents of the chip. For the record:
Usage
-------------------------------------------
afuXXX /i<ROM filename> [/o<save ROM filename>] [/nr] [/p[n][c]]

/nr - don't check ROM ID
/pbnc -
b - Program Boot Block
n - Program NVRAM
c - Destroy System CMOS
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
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