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32GB+: PC-Chips M577

Posted: Fri May 03, 2002 12:16 pm
by NickS
Hi, Rainbow. Can you do a big disk fix for PC-Chips M577 BIOS based on Jan Steunebrink's 990309J.BIN ? there are quite a few people who would be interested.

Or could you give advice where to make the changes ? In the original.tmp ?

Thanks

Posted: Fri May 03, 2002 3:58 pm
by Rainbow
I described the 32GB fix somewhere in this forum. I will upload the fixed BIOS later when I came home.

Posted: Fri May 03, 2002 5:45 pm
by NickS
Thanks, Rainbow. I've just found the details under "ga586hx Bios support for 32Gb+" and I see there's a program to find the byte sequence and change it. I'll wait and try your fix.

Posted: Fri May 03, 2002 9:06 pm
by Rainbow
I downloaded the 577_K6plus_Bios_19990309J_AWD.zip from ajzchips' page, run my awd32gb on it and uploaded it at http://www.wimsbios.com/~rainbow/BIOS%2032GB/m577.zip. It should work upto 64GB now.
I'm still working on next version of the program that will fix the 64GB bug too.

Posted: Wed May 08, 2002 11:39 pm
by NickS
I changed the BIOS ID string to M577 and forgot to load all the modules back in... I now have a mobo with half a BIOS. I think I have to wait for my son to bring his M577 back from Uni so I can hot flash..... the BIOS chip is not recognised in the VT586TX i430TX mobo by AWDFLASH 6.28 and AWDFLASH 5.35 gets it wrong and fails to flash it. I'll try Uniflash....

Posted: Thu May 09, 2002 9:42 am
by NickS
Uniflash saves the day - again ! AWDFLASH wouldn't allow it, but Uniflash allowed me to flash the old M577 BIOS on the VT586TX (hot swapping).

Posted: Thu May 09, 2002 10:37 pm
by NickS
I have checked out Rainbow's >32Gb fix for the Amptron9900/M577 BIOS and so far it works (no UDMA, ME safe mode), but I now have to get a utility to prevent my IBM hdd from saying it can do UDMA 100 as the BIOS tries to set this and the chipset doesn't.. (known problem).

So far my attempt to patch the BIOS ID to say "M577" as per the original has failed. I'm still investigating.

Posted: Thu May 09, 2002 11:12 pm
by Rainbow
IBM Feature Tool down on the page http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Posted: Fri May 10, 2002 12:04 am
by NickS
OK, downloading now... thanks again.

Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2002 2:14 pm
by NickS
A private email pointed out that the link in this thread was dead. This update is to say that the PC-Chips M577 version is sorted, tested and available, along with the Amptron PM9900 version, at http://wims.rainbow-software.org/

Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2002 1:20 pm
by adamgyurcsek
Hi!
I bought an IBM 120GB HDD (S/N: IC35L120AVVA07-0) and the BIOS mentioned in this thread recognizes it as 2139MB HDD. Please let me know wether the 120GB patch for the M577 BIOS is still in the works or has been called off.
Many thanks.
Adam.

Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2002 1:33 pm
by NickS
I will take a look at that right now. The BIOS may just be displaying it wrong, and you may find that the OS is quite happy with it as it is. Are you happy to test it ?

Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2002 1:49 pm
by NickS
OK, patched BIOS available for testing at http://wims.rainbow-software.org/nicks
(note: it still says ">32Gb" - I'll fix that after lunch)

Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2002 2:15 pm
by adamgyurcsek
I'm using it already :D
There seems to be a problem with it:
It recognizes the drive as 123 (MB or GB - the metric is not printed...)
in the BIOS IDE autodetection menu. However, it reverts to the 2139MB size in the POST information table...

Posted: Fri Sep 27, 2002 2:28 pm
by ajzchips
Don't worry about that too much. What does FDISK report?