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ecs board dead after wrong bios update?

Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2011 4:05 am
by aphilip730
Hi the other day i flashed my ECS NFORCE 570 SLIT-A (V5.1) with the bios for NFORCE 570 SLIT-A (V3.1) by accident and now all i get is a black screen. My floppy drive spins but it doesnt read anything. i do get beeps if i remove memory and my video card fan slows down like normal but it doesnt post. I tried making a bootdisk and try to fix it but it doesnt seem to read it.

My bios type is Award and the chip is a plcc which is in a socket. I also heard of people shorting pins 2 and 3 to force it to boot block.

Thank You

Re: ecs board dead after wrong bios update?

Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2011 11:09 am
by edwin
Reading this:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Suppor ... agment-FAQ

I suspect ECS boards do not have a recovery option (to save money? ). You tried the normal recovery procedure?
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Suppor ... agment-FAQ

The pin 1-2/2-3 is just for clearing the contents, not for making it go bootblock mode:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Suppor ... agment-FAQ

I think you need to find someone with a plcc eeprom programmer or buy a programmed chip online at something like http://www.badflash.com

Re: ecs board dead after wrong bios update?

Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 6:10 am
by aphilip730
i really dont want to spend more money and i dont know of any local computer stores that fix bios chips in nj. :(
Is there a way to short two pins to force the boot block?

Re: ecs board dead after wrong bios update?

Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 4:10 pm
by edwin
yeah, use a bit of metal wire between the pins. can even bend a staple and pry it in. Just make sure you put it in the right locations.

Image

Re: ecs board dead after wrong bios update?

Posted: Sat Feb 12, 2011 9:04 pm
by cp
Since you hear beeps when booting without memory, the bootblock is still there and working. Otherwise you wouldn't hear any beeps.
Next good thing: the floppy spins up. Make sure to use a known good floppy drive and disk. Test them on another machine before anything else.

Making an emergency floppy is quite easy: Make sure to create a bootable floppy (or download one from the usual sources). A disk only containing COMMAND.COM, IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS should work best.
Copy the BIOS and the Award DOS flasher onto the disk. Alter the AUTOEXEC.BAT on the floppy to load nothing but the flasher and the BIOS and continue without any interaction. The commandline should look something like this: 'awdflash.exe bios.bin /py/sn/R'

replace awdflash.exe with the Award flasher you copied on the disk.
replace bios.bin with the BIOS file you copied on the disk.
/py - automatically answer YES to the question 'Really program bios?'
/sn - automatically answer NO to the question 'Want to save current bios?'
/R - restart after programming

Re: ecs board dead after wrong bios update?

Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 6:18 am
by aphilip730
i actually had the fdd cable connected the wrong way. Theres no floppy light. :(
and i tried shorting the pins but nothing really happens.

Re: ecs board dead after wrong bios update?

Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 10:35 pm
by aphilip730
heres the link to the datasheet :
http://doc.chipfind.ru/pmc/pm49fl004t33jce.htm

I dont know which one to short

Re: ecs board dead after wrong bios update?

Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 5:54 am
by aphilip730
bump?

Really considering getting a new chip but i really want to try getting the bootblock to work. cant figure out which pins though.