Detailed Instructions on Uniflash & Bios Settings, Pleas

Discusses BIOS flashers and utilities from Award, AMI and Uniflash
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greyc123
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I've downloaded the latest uniflash files and am feeling really really dumb. How do I use the extracted-onto-a-floppy files?

I'm trying to replace a 6.4 gig drive from an AMD K6-2 (VIA Apollo (M)VP3 chipset) 07/15/1998-577+ITE8661-2A5LEH0AC-00. The new drive is a 60 gig Maxtor 5400 and I can't get it to be recognized. I've tried the jumpers 6 ways to Sunday, fiddled in the cmos with user defined settings, tried the maxblast plus II files, still nothing. Hangs after the mem check. Auto detect also hangs. The Maxtor techie tells me I need to either flash or try an ata card. I'd like to use uniflash as it seems the most appropriate way to go.

Here's where I'm feeling dumb: How do I get to a DOS prompt without a hard drive installed and, if I get there, what do I do?

And how/where do I disable flash write protect in the BIOS?

~Thanks~

Grace
NickS
BIOS Bodhisattva
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Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 10:34 am
Location: Thames Valley, UK

Welcome to a fellow PC-Chips M577 owner !

If you have Windows XP or ME, the easiest route for a newbie is to download and run a Dos 6 or DRDOS boot disk creator from http://www.bootdisk.com.

If you have Windows 95 or 98 you should be able to create a bootable diskette using the "format" function, ticking the box which says (if I remember correctly) "copy system files", or by going to a DOS prompt (Start/run/"command") and typing FORMAT A: /s/u.

Use the file for M577 at http://wims.rainbow-software.org/ as this has support for discs up to 64 Gb.
Tested patched BIOSes. Untested patched BIOSes.
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greyc123
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Thanks Nick, I successfully made and used a win 98 boot disk, then ran awdflash and it froze up.

Rebooted and ran uniflash.exe and am now stuck on "file name" for the new bios. What do i use as the file name? I checked the directory of the uniflash floppy and I get no indication as to what I should do now.

Please help!
NickS
BIOS Bodhisattva
Posts: 3145
Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 10:34 am
Location: Thames Valley, UK

greyc123 wrote:Thanks Nick, I successfully made and used a win 98 boot disk, then ran awdflash and it froze up.

Rebooted and ran uniflash.exe and am now stuck on "file name" for the new bios. What do i use as the file name? I checked the directory of the uniflash floppy and I get no indication as to what I should do now.

Please help!
OK, I hope you unzipped the BIOS file to 990306r.bin. You copied uniflash.exe and 990306r.bin to the diskette. Boot from the diskette. Then all you need to type is "uniflash -e 990306r.bin". :)
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greyc123
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IT WORKED, NICK! Thank you so very much for your help! :D
greyc123
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...only now I can't get xp to install...

hangs at reboot with "error loading operating system"

tried going back to the boot disk and I get "non-system disk" error

please direct...

Grace
NickS
BIOS Bodhisattva
Posts: 3145
Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 10:34 am
Location: Thames Valley, UK

OK, is your drive a UDMA33 drive ? Probably not, as it's 60 Gb it's probably UDMA66 or UDMA100. You need to get the utility from the Maxtor website to tell your drive to run at UDMA33.
http://www.maxtor.com/softwaredownload/utilities.html
Choose file 100updt.exe

Also, have you tried to use MaxBlast at all ?
edit: Yes, I see that you have.
I know that Seagate's Disk Wizard uses a Dynamic Disc Overlay which needs to be removed, and IBM's Disk Feature Utility has to be re-run to recover the full capacity of the drive, but I don't know what Maxtor does.
edit: See if there's a removal procedure.
Tested patched BIOSes. Untested patched BIOSes.
Emails *will* be ignored unless the subject line starts "Wim's BIOS forum"
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