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Flash gone bad.

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2003 5:04 am
by jsjancewicz
I have a BCM motherboard, QS440BX-2mb. I installed a Maxtor 30 gig hard drive ATA 133, 7200 rpm with a PCI Maxtor Adapter Card. The Bios is Award 32dip pin made by Winbond. I obtained the upgrade from the BCM website. Upgrade for 2mb chip was version 2.10. I booted from a floppy with config.sys and autoexec.bat files deleted and new bios upgrade on it. The process started fine until a few seconds into it and then the screen went blank. Only thing that seems to be working are the fans. I removed the bios chip to have it professionally upgraded but can anyone tell me what could possible have happened so that I can be on guard for the next time. Thanks,

Joe

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2003 5:28 am
by soupy
Wrong BIOS voltage?

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2003 5:51 am
by jsjancewicz
I didn't change the chip, I only wanted to upgrade the bios and I used BCM's upgrade software.
Programmer tells me now that he had trouble erasing the chip.
Any ideas?
Joe

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2003 11:24 am
by peace
jsjancewicz wrote:I didn't change the chip, I only wanted to upgrade the bios and I used BCM's upgrade software.
Programmer tells me now that he had trouble erasing the chip.
Any ideas?
Joe
Some of the cheaper flash ROMs, especially MX (Macronix) chips have very limited reprogramming cycles. It sounds like the chip is defective (will no longer fully erase). That would explain why your upgrade failed.

I have some extra 2Mb DIP flash ROMs. I can program one for you and ship it your way. Send a PM if you're interested.

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2003 2:23 pm
by Rainbow
Awdflash is known to crash without any reasons sometimes, leaving the BIOS corrupted even if the chip is completely OK.

Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2003 4:55 pm
by jsjancewicz
Want to thank all the replies. I had to have the bios erased and reflashed. The programmer did have trouble erasing it but finally got it. It works fine now. Thanks again.
Joe