BIOS Updates forum

Hi

I would be grateful for any help as I ave a dead motherboard following an attempted BIOS upgrade. Everything was fine until I bought a new HDD (40GB) which wouldn't work following installation (not found during POST), seemed my BIOS was the problem (?32GB limit) looking at this and other sites on the web. The motherboard is a TMC TI5VG+ with Award BIOS. The TMC website had no BIOS upgrades but I found one through this site. After running the Flash program it hung while saving my BIOS settings to file (I waited an hour before switching off!).

Now when I turn on I get continuous beeps, no hard drive light and no floppy drive light (or access) and nothing on the screen. I've tried clearing CMOS - but still the same.

Any suggestions - my BIOS chip does appear to be removable. Are these firms that you find on the net advertising BIOS upgrades/repairs a way to go or is there a DIY solution.

Thanks in anticipation for your help

Traven

Try www.badflash.com or similar sites for a replacement chip or let your chip reprogrammed .
In our collection it says TMC TI5VG+ 128KB - it's possible you have a 256Kb Bios and your flashprog messed the whole thing up .
Please post us your chip manufacturer and type number ( pull of the Award sticker and post all numbers you see)

Hi Deniss,
Thanks For replying.

The letters/numbers on the BIOS chip are

MX (Big letters) then
S992633
29F002NTQC-12
1A7119

The motherboard manual says the BIOS is 128k - how can I check if it is that size?

Traven wrote:29F002NTQC-12

2 Mbit. Oh dear.

The motherboard manual says the BIOS is 128k - how can I check if it is that size?

Looks like the manual was out of date. Before you flash, you can check by saving your old BIOS
command line:
awdflash savebios.bin /sy/pn
(where awdflash is the name of the Award flasher)
Another recovery option is flashing the chip in another motherboard ("hot flash") which is referred to in the www.wimsbios.com FAQ under "my motherboard is dead".
Did you not get a "size mismatch" error ?
@Rainbow; how does the flasher split the image if he flashed a 128KB image into a 256KB ROM ? Is it all in the top 128KB, all in the bottom 128K or boootblock at the top and everything else at the bottom ?
If all in the top, he might get some result by leaving pin A17 out of the socket...

Traven says that it hung before flashing. Looks like the stupid awdflash f***ed it up (older versions do this if they don't know the chip). Maybe ISA VGA card & ISA floppy controller will help.

The latest 256KB BIOS for TI5VG+ supports HDDs up to 128GB:
05/25/1999-VP3-586B-W877-2A5LEM2LC-00
TI5VG+ -Z6-0525
http://mobokive.dyndns.org/Archive/Tmc/bios/ti5vgz6.bin

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't have access to another board so hot flashing is out (sounds too scary for me anyway).

I guess I will just have to send my chip off to get reflashed.

I'll let you know how it finally pans out.

Traven