BIOS Updates forum

hello.

yesterday, the following happened to me.

i tried to update the bios of my gigabyte 7s748 without reseting it to fail-safe settings first. have done this before with the newest bios updates, never had a problem. the bios is beta, but it solves the issue of showing wrong cpu-temperatures and therefore shutting down the computer whilst intensive gaming because of the overheat-protection.

anyway...
did it from bios with the q-flash utitility. everything went fine but after rebooting the computer it is dead. it's not trying to access the floppy, no peep, nada.
tried to clear cmos by removing the battery. no change.
removed all cards except gfx, all memory sticks except one, disconnected all drives. no change.

from the sticker i can see, that it's a phoenix bios.

there is no cmos-clear jumper since gigabyte removed them from their mobos but i can see cmos-clear pins. tried to shorten them but i'm not sure if i'm doing everything right.
i can't imagine that the bios is bad, it's from their website and also the flashing process went fine without any errors.

can anyone describe me the process of clearing cmos on a jumperless board?

any other suggestions how to get the compi back to work. i have 2 other mainboards of the same model but i don't think that i can get the bios chip off that easily to do a hot swap.

i've flashed bioses since years now. even did some weird things on older models and always had success or could at least somehow get the old bios back up and running.

this is the first time it didn't work.

thanx for any help.

regards,
hannes

Removing the battery and shorting the positive and negative terminals is the same as a Clear CMOS.

The best way to do this is:
a) Unplug the power cord.
b) Remove the battery.
c) Short the terminals and hit the power button a couple of times WHILE the terminals are shorted.
d) Reinsert the battery.
e) Replug the power cord.
f) Power-on (hopefully it will now).

thanx, did it, but no help.

this is freaking me out a little bit.

applying a new bios from the manufacturer, no errors while flashing and then the motherboard is dead.

and no way to recover from a bootdisk.

hmm...

So it doesn't even look like it's trying to access the floppy, right?

I hope this is ok to post my services:

goto

http://bioschips.deletewindows.com/

I offer new bios chips and re-flashing of your existing chips.

nope, doesn't try to access the floppy.

Do you have another mobo to try hotswapping with?

yap. i have 2 more of the exact same model. still working.

but i tried today and i'm not sure if i can unmount the bios chip. it seems to be unremovable.

Is it socketed or soldered to the mobo?

just had a close look. it's soldered to the mainboard.

Then there really isn't much you can do.

fugazi wrote:just had a close look. it's soldered to the mainboard.

What type of chip is it ? I'm wondering whether you can try Rainbow's trick of shorting the two highest address pins to force a checksum error, but you can't do that with a FWH type device.

fugazi wrote:just had a close look. it's soldered to the mainboard.

What type of chip is it ? I'm wondering whether you can try Rainbow's trick of shorting the two highest address pins to force a checksum error, but you can't do that with a FWH type device.

the label on the chip says "phoenix bios d686".

what's a fwh-type?

this sounds interesting...

thanx for all your help.

If this board is still under warranty, best bet is to RMA it. The chip type can be identified by peeling of the Phoenix label but that will invaildate your warranty. If it's no longer under warranty, peel off the Phoenix label and tell us what numbers are underneath.

If it's a standard EEPROM, there's a chance that you can invoke the "bootblock" loader by forcing a BIOS checksum error. When the machine starts running the first thing it does is execute the bootblock which is held in the top of the BIOS ROM. The bootblock checks the rest of the BIOS ROM and by interfering with the addressing you can force a checksum error. When a checksum error is detected the BIOS should try to load from diskette - but if you flashed the wrong BIOS it may not be able to use the diskette!

FWH - FirmWare Hub - a device created by Intel which combines a number of functions in one chip, including BIOS EEPROM. The FWH can be programmed in parallel mode but in normal use (once it's on the mobo) the data is read out in a sort of serial mode and does not use a set of address lines. Hence it's impossible to short the address lines on the FWH to force a BIOS checksum error.