P4T : eSupport.com Award BIOS upgrades good value ?

[J Cod]

I'm trying to figure out if eSupport's BIOS upgrades for an older ASUS board
with Award BIOS :


BIOS Type: Award
BIOS Date: 03/02/01
BIOS ID String: 03/02/2001-I850-<>
OEM Signon: ASUS P4T ACPI BIOS Revision 1004
Chipset: INTEL 2530 REV 2
Super I/O: NSC 364 REV 11 FOUND AT PORT 2EH


Are a good value.

I sent them an e-mail asking specific questions about the supposed benefits of
their Award BIOS upgarde only to receive a reply that answered none of my
specific questions, just restated the original e-mail. That's not a good sign
that anyone is at home, imho.

Is there another source for the latest Award BIOS upgrade for the P4T than
paying this company US $30 ?

thanks, J. Cod

 

[Paul]

I'm trying to figure out if eSupport's BIOS upgrades for an older ASUS board
with Award BIOS :


BIOS Type: Award
BIOS Date: 03/02/01
BIOS ID String: 03/02/2001-I850-<>
OEM Signon: ASUS P4T ACPI BIOS Revision 1004
Chipset: INTEL 2530 REV 2
Super I/O: NSC 364 REV 11 FOUND AT PORT 2EH


Are a good value.

I sent them an e-mail asking specific questions about the supposed benefits of
their Award BIOS upgarde only to receive a reply that answered none of my
specific questions, just restated the original e-mail. That's not a good sign
that anyone is at home, imho.

Is there another source for the latest Award BIOS upgrade for the P4T than
paying this company US $30 ?

thanks, J. Cod

In the beta section of the download page, there is a
1008.001 beta listed, 2002/12/16.

http://au.asus.com/support/download...13&l3_id=1&m_id=1&f_name=1008-001.zip~zaqwedc

The BIOS history link shows the following (the beta BIOS
never gets release notes, but should be safe to use). These
are all the improvements made to the Asus BIOS:

---------------------------------------------------------------
[ 1007 ]
Change "CPU Front Side Bus Frequency" to "CPU FSB Freq./PCI Freq."
in BIOS setup menu. Integrate Intel memory reference code version
1.5.

[ 1006 ]
Support ATA HDDs greater than 160GB.
Fix ACPI error in Windows XP when COM2 is disabled in BIOS.

[ 1005 ]
Speed up BIOS boot sequence.
Fix Windows 2000 cannot be installed with some UDMA mode 5 HDDs.
Support new CPU.
Rearrange system resource assignment for type 0 multi-function PCI cards.
Change "ZIP-100" string to "ZIP".
Fix corrupted ESCD data will cause system lockups.

[ 1003 ]
Add RDRAM turbo mode option in BIOS setup menu.
Fix CPU voltage setting will reset when rebooting the system.
Change DMI CPU family from Pentium III to Pentium Processor family.
Clear CMOS contents if RTC power fail status bit is set.
Improve CPU temperature reading accuracy.
Add support for Remote Lockout version 1.1.
Fix SMBIOS error in the implementation.
Skip extented memory erasure when enabling quick POST item.
Revise POST memory management codes.
Save PCI devices command byte data before S3 suspend.

[ 1002 ]
First Release.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Why would you pay for a BIOS, when you can download one for
free from the manufacturer (Asus)? With maybe 5000-10000 motherboards
out there, do you suppose the Esupport BIOS is custom designed
for that motherboard (not likely) ? If you pay me the $30,
I'll download the Asus BIOS file for you and email it to you ))

Paul

 

[J Cod]

Paul, thanks for your reply. I could not find on the ASUS site the links to
download the BIOS as expected and so went to the AWARD site which forwarded me
to eSupport. I find the idea of paying $29.95 for a bios update laughable even
if the company did respond to the specific questions in my e-mail to their
support department.

best, J. Cod