Last night, I modified a BIOS flash provided by ECS and (not to my surprise) now the board won't boot after being flashed with the modified BIOS. Since I need to get this machine to the waiting customer tomorrow, I have another board of the same model coming here overnight. At that point, I will swap the BIOS chips. This will leave me with a new board and a f*cked BIOS chip.

Unfortunately, this is not the first (or second) time I have done this. In the past, if I had two similar boards and one was dead, I would power up the good board swap the BIOS chips while the board was on and booted into DOS. At that point, I would be able to flash the bad chip on the good board.

Since these BIOS chips are getting smaller (as seen in the attached photo), it is harder to pry chips off running boards. Not to mention a pain in the ass of taking a power supply out of a case to run the board. So, my question is, does anyone have the ability to flash the BIOS chip in the attached photo without the use of the motherboard? Or, does anyone have links to cheap solutions for me to do this myself (as this situation will eventually come around again). Thanks.

Hmm, we have a few MCU programmers around here. Maybe they would work? Does the BIOS chip say what the part number is?

Stu

I've gotten stuff done by Jack at BadFlash.com on a couple of different occasions. He does good work. Also, you can get a PLC extraction tool at Radio Shack that makes those chips easy to take out and insert.

The chip is covered by an AMI BIOS sticker. Perhaps once I extract it, I will take that sticker off.

Thanks for that link. I will take that option into consideration.

If this is happening to you a lot, you might want to look into Bios Savior.

I've seen this before, but it's not really what I need. I just need the ability to reflash a cmos chip without setting up a similar motherboard.

I would imagine that this equipment may not be cheap, but that would be the best.

I modified a BIOS flash provided by [the motherboard manufacturer]

Maybe I don't understand what you're saying, but why would you do that? Do you know how to hack BIOS code and you just screwed up?

Modifying the Award Bios and AMI Bios to change the EPA Energy Star logo on POST is something I've been doing for years. Every now and then, something screws up.

Either I inserted the logo into the wrong spot in the flash, or I flashed with an incompatible BIOS and I was doomed to fail. I think, in this case, I used the wrong BIOS. My mobo is revision 1.3 and I used a flash under the rev 1.5 heading. I did this because I assumed I would be OK. I am unsure at the moment whether it was the logo code, or the "improper" flash.

I've not personally tried this but I know somebody that has and it's worked for him...

He booted one of the boards with the good BIOS. Then he removed the BIOS chip and replaced it with the bad one whilst it was still running and then reflashed it. Because it was so difficult to get the chips out even with the proper PLCC tool he didn't want to risk it shorting something out so he removed the both chips before starting and only held them in enough for it to make contact. Will take a steady hand and probably an extra one to type with...

Not sure if you'd want to try this as it's not exactly going to be covered under warranty if the magic smoke gets let out. And as I said before, I've never done it personally but my friend did luck out and manage it without anything bad happening.

- Trevor

My first post indicates that I have used this method in the past, but I am trying to avoid it since it's a pain in the ass. It absolutely does work though.

Oops. Sorry. Misread that bit. Serves me right for not paying attention and trying to watch TV at the same time!
Any recent EEPROM/Flash programmer should be able to reprogramme it. I could do it for you but I'm in the UK.

- Trevor

Any recent EEPROM/Flash programmer should be able to reprogramme it.

Do you have any idea what those cost and what the cheapest one would be? I think having one would be good. Do I have to be a genious to operate it?