wrong bios

[Meik Dahogo]

Hello,

The bios of my Asus P4C800 Deluxe crashed on me with "wrong bios
checksum" messages and the question of entering a diskette with a
correct bios. in my enthusiasm i downloaded the bios of the P4P800 which
the mainboard accepted without question. great, cause now my mainboard
thinks it is a P4P800 and lots of things don't work anymore (date, time,
hardware on board, etc)
When attempting to flash the correct bios it tells me - surprise - that
the new bios file is not compatible with the existing one.
Now, the bios chip is fixed on the mainboard, so replacement is no
option. stupid me, but if anybody had an idea, i would be really happy!

thanks!

Meik

 

[Paul]

Hello,

The bios of my Asus P4C800 Deluxe crashed on me with "wrong bios
checksum" messages and the question of entering a diskette with a
correct bios. in my enthusiasm i downloaded the bios of the P4P800 which
the mainboard accepted without question. great, cause now my mainboard
thinks it is a P4P800 and lots of things don't work anymore (date, time,
hardware on board, etc)
When attempting to flash the correct bios it tells me - surprise - that
the new bios file is not compatible with the existing one.
Now, the bios chip is fixed on the mainboard, so replacement is no
option. stupid me, but if anybody had an idea, i would be really happy!

thanks!

Meik

I get the impression in this Abxzone posting, that afudos has
an option to "force" a flash. Note that one of the arguments
here is responsible for flashing the boot block as well, which
from a risk perspective, you might not want to do.

http://abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=532360#post532360
(Note: the /nc suggestion doesn't look 100% correct to me...)
http://abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=588036#post588036

People seem to say the /pbnc flashes the boot block, and if you
do that, then if the flash fails, you could be dead. The /i
allows an input file name to be specified (no space between the
letter i and the filename). The /n is the key - it says to ignore
the ROM ID check, so should allow you to get back to being a
P4C800 Deluxe.

This one flashes boot block and ignores ROM ID check:
afudos /ip4p8x109.ami /n /pbnc

There was a link to this doc on Abxzone. I think the /p flag
indicates you will be choosing options, and including any one
or all of the b, n, or c letters specifies which parts you
want to program.

http://www.ami.com/support/doc/AMIBIOS8_Flash_Recovery_Whitepaper_v10.pdf

Pg. 6 of that document would suggest /pnc would leave the boot
block alone. I would think just starting with the /n would be
enough - the command format would look like:

afudos /ip4p8x109.ami /n

HTH,
Paul

 

[DaveW]

Sorry; time for a new motherboard.

 

[Ben Pope]

Sorry; time for a new motherboard.

Hmm, well no chance of a hot swap, but there must be a way of forcing the
new BIOS. There might be some command line switches to allow that - they
may not be documented.

Ben

 

[Meik Dahogo]

Hello all,

thank you for your concern.

There is an easy solution to the problem: Asus offers de undocumented
keycombination ALT + F2 which forces the MB to accept any file called
P4C800.ROM from an inserted disk. Immediate flashing of the correct,
updated BIOS and the problem was solved!

Hope somebody else can profit from this as well!

Meik

 

[Kylesb]

| DaveW wrote:
| > | >> Hello,
| >>
| >> The bios of my Asus P4C800 Deluxe crashed on me with "wrong bios
| >> checksum" messages and the question of entering a diskette with a
| >> correct bios. in my enthusiasm i downloaded the bios of the
P4P800 which
| >> the mainboard accepted without question. great, cause now my
mainboard
| >> thinks it is a P4P800 and lots of things don't work anymore
(date, time,
| >> hardware on board, etc)
| >> When attempting to flash the correct bios it tells me -
surprise - that
| >> the new bios file is not compatible with the existing one.
| >> Now, the bios chip is fixed on the mainboard, so replacement is
no
| >> option. stupid me, but if anybody had an idea, i would be really
happy!
| >>
| > Sorry; time for a new motherboard.
|
|
| Hmm, well no chance of a hot swap, but there must be a way of
forcing the
| new BIOS. There might be some command line switches to allow that -
they
| may not be documented.
|

"EASY solution found" post above suggests alt+F2 will force flash any
file on a floppy w/r/t the p4c800 in particular. I don't own this
board so I cannot speak from experience.