Help a non-n00b recover a AMI BIOS 7-beep incorrect flash...
Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:13 am
Hm. Formatting a title is hard.
Okay. Here's my dumb. I have a PC Chips M825LU v7.2 board with a really screwed-up CPU. I bought the CPU on eBay for an unreasonably cheap price... the first chip I received was DOA, so I returned it and exchanged it for another, that POSTed, and that's all I cared about. The board I originally tested it in considered it a Duron (it was an Athlon 2400+ I think), but I thought it was BIOS error. Then, after screwing around with settings, seeing what settings it was stable at, I found that it was actually a modified Athlon with its L2 cache disabled (traces on the board cut), considering it a Duron. Woohoo.
Okay, so I slap this chip in the PCChips board a few months later, because the PCChips board has integrated video and mATX form factor. Cool beans. Well, the board detects it as a Duron 650. And it won't let me change it. Wuh?
I go online to PCChip's site, and enter my board's info - on the board was written "M825", so I choose M825. There was only one version, a 1.2a. That's strange, mine says 7.2a, but it's so similar I figure it was a misprint or something. I download the BIOS, burn a bootable CD out of it, boot it up, and run the flasher. It tells me my old BIOS was made in 2003 and is newer, which I'm like "huh? did they write the wrong BIOS last time?"... so I continue anyway. It flashes OK and I reboot it.
Cue problems. No screen. OK, I figure, it needs to clear the NVRAM. I turn it off and flip the clear jumper. I turn it back on. Still no screen. Er... crap.
I pop in my POSTcard, and find it flittering through all the POST codes. FF, DD, D3, D4, D5, D6, D9, *flitter* 27, FF. And it hangs at FF infinitely. If I hit Reset, it shuts off. Oh, hell... okay. So I Google for how to trigger the boot block recovery mode, because I already know it assumes the BIOS is OK. I first start with the WE+A12 pin shorting (after peeling off the sticker and looking up the data sheet for my BIOS ROM chip), which DOES actually work, to trigger the boot block recovery mode. It accesses the floppy and does some fun stuff. Awesome.
So I load up the board's CORRECT bios as AMIBOOT.ROM on the floppy (a 720k 3.5" disk since that's all I own - they were cheap and reliable! =o ), and fire it up with the pins shorted again (then released). It initializes (code EC), reads (code EE), then begins loading the BIOS ROM from the floppy (code F0, F2, F3...). After it finishes... disaster.
I get code F6, and continuous 7 beep loop, which means (from the AMI beep code description) "No flash EPROM detected". What the crap? Of course it's Flash! It was flashed before, remember? That's how we got here! I even tried it with the incorrect ROM (the one I loaded to get into this mess) on the floppy, and the same thing happens.
I also later learned about the Ctrl+Home trick, but since I have a wireless keyboard, it's not a matter of holding it, it's a matter of repeatedly tapping Ctrl+Home while it cycles through the POST codes. It catches after all the "D" codes are done and gives me an EC code instead of FF, just like shorting the pins.
I'm going to say it's a safe assumption that nobody's ever encountered this problem before. But I've been able to recover a Netgear wireless router from a bad manufacturer flash, using a serial console and some crafty net-booting. PCs have got to have a similar failsafe, right? How come my failsafe's not working right?
Okay. Here's my dumb. I have a PC Chips M825LU v7.2 board with a really screwed-up CPU. I bought the CPU on eBay for an unreasonably cheap price... the first chip I received was DOA, so I returned it and exchanged it for another, that POSTed, and that's all I cared about. The board I originally tested it in considered it a Duron (it was an Athlon 2400+ I think), but I thought it was BIOS error. Then, after screwing around with settings, seeing what settings it was stable at, I found that it was actually a modified Athlon with its L2 cache disabled (traces on the board cut), considering it a Duron. Woohoo.
Okay, so I slap this chip in the PCChips board a few months later, because the PCChips board has integrated video and mATX form factor. Cool beans. Well, the board detects it as a Duron 650. And it won't let me change it. Wuh?
I go online to PCChip's site, and enter my board's info - on the board was written "M825", so I choose M825. There was only one version, a 1.2a. That's strange, mine says 7.2a, but it's so similar I figure it was a misprint or something. I download the BIOS, burn a bootable CD out of it, boot it up, and run the flasher. It tells me my old BIOS was made in 2003 and is newer, which I'm like "huh? did they write the wrong BIOS last time?"... so I continue anyway. It flashes OK and I reboot it.
Cue problems. No screen. OK, I figure, it needs to clear the NVRAM. I turn it off and flip the clear jumper. I turn it back on. Still no screen. Er... crap.
I pop in my POSTcard, and find it flittering through all the POST codes. FF, DD, D3, D4, D5, D6, D9, *flitter* 27, FF. And it hangs at FF infinitely. If I hit Reset, it shuts off. Oh, hell... okay. So I Google for how to trigger the boot block recovery mode, because I already know it assumes the BIOS is OK. I first start with the WE+A12 pin shorting (after peeling off the sticker and looking up the data sheet for my BIOS ROM chip), which DOES actually work, to trigger the boot block recovery mode. It accesses the floppy and does some fun stuff. Awesome.
So I load up the board's CORRECT bios as AMIBOOT.ROM on the floppy (a 720k 3.5" disk since that's all I own - they were cheap and reliable! =o ), and fire it up with the pins shorted again (then released). It initializes (code EC), reads (code EE), then begins loading the BIOS ROM from the floppy (code F0, F2, F3...). After it finishes... disaster.
I get code F6, and continuous 7 beep loop, which means (from the AMI beep code description) "No flash EPROM detected". What the crap? Of course it's Flash! It was flashed before, remember? That's how we got here! I even tried it with the incorrect ROM (the one I loaded to get into this mess) on the floppy, and the same thing happens.
I also later learned about the Ctrl+Home trick, but since I have a wireless keyboard, it's not a matter of holding it, it's a matter of repeatedly tapping Ctrl+Home while it cycles through the POST codes. It catches after all the "D" codes are done and gives me an EC code instead of FF, just like shorting the pins.
I'm going to say it's a safe assumption that nobody's ever encountered this problem before. But I've been able to recover a Netgear wireless router from a bad manufacturer flash, using a serial console and some crafty net-booting. PCs have got to have a similar failsafe, right? How come my failsafe's not working right?