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Biostar M6VBE -> Wrong BIOS
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 5:02 pm
by esters
Motherboard - Biostar M6VBE (1.1)
SB - VT82C596B
Before I was aware of what I had done I was doing the following :
Downloaded the BIOS from Biostar site, patched it to support my VIA VT6421A SATA/RAID PCI card using "cbrom" and flashed it with Award Flash Utilty v7.03.
After the reboot there was no response from the PC, no output to the monitor, no beeps.
I started to look around what could be cause, turns out that I've flashed the wrong BIOS, I have an Fujitsu-Siemens motherboard, so I downloaded the BIOS image from Fujitsu-Siemens support site and followed an guide in Biostar's knowledge base tried it several times, without success.
Could this mean the mobo is dead / unrecoverable ?
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 5:44 pm
by Denniss
The M6VBE series are three boards:
M6VBE with VT82C692 northbridge chipset
M6VBE with VT82C693 northbridge chipset
M6VBE-A with VT82C693A northbridge chipset
All three use a different Bios incompatible to other versions.
Look at the board and tell us which one you have. Please also tell us the filename of the Bios you flashed.
Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:05 pm
by esters
The motherboard is M6VBE-A / NB - VT82C693A / SB - VT82C596B
Bios image I flashed was VBE0727A, after that I tried VBE1118A from FJ-Siemens website
Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 6:42 pm
by Denniss
The VBE1118A is the Bios for the M6VBE 693 thus your newer model M6VBE-A stopped working.
If the board is completetly dead, not even accessing the Floppy drive, then you either need to have your Bios Flashrom reprogrammed/hotflashed or you need a new flashrom.
The VBE0727a is the latest known Bios for the M6VBE-A.
Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 7:43 pm
by esters
Thanks for your reply Denniss. But at the first time I used the VBE0727A bios ROM and patched it to support my VIA VT6421A card, but when I tried to flash it Award flash utility said - not enough memory (I have 2*64 PC100 RAM modules), so I tried the "/tiny" switch and it worked, and after that it didn't boot.
As for the floppy. Yes, it can access the drive upon booting so it is possible to recover it by using the "BootBlocker" technology in Biostar motherboards, if I'm not mistaking.
I'll look for a proper Award Flash Utilty, since I don't know what version of AWARD BIOS I have.
Edit - "Model: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG <Elite BIOS>, 07/27/00" from the VBE0727A ROM using Bios Information Tool v1.4
Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:34 pm
by esters
Without success I'm trying to use the blind method
I use Award Flash Utilty 8.73 with VBE0727A BIOS, created a bootable floppy disk through Windows XP and created and "autoexec.bat" file with the following -
Code: Select all
AWDFLASH BIOS.bin /Tiny/py/sn/F/cc/R
Upon booting, the floppy is detected, there is activity but it seems it is stuck when flashing, after a reboot there is no output to the monitor.
EDIT
I did some googling and found a tutorial
Code: Select all
www{dot}sysopt{dot}com/tutorials/article.php/12034_3532681_1
which helped me to recover the board!! The combination I used was:
Code: Select all
awd873.exe backup.bin /py /Sb /sn /cc /cp /cd /R
Thanks for your help Denniss
