VOGONS


First post, by kanecvr

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Hi guys - this is my first post but I've been reading the vogons forums for a while now.

I need a bios for a socket 4 Intel Premiere/PCI motherboard (intel batman). The board won't post, but it's built-in recovery feature seems to work (jumpering the recovery pins makes the mobo beep and if I connect a FDD it will seek a bios file on it).

Google is no help, and the intel website doesn't support anything older then LGA775.

Labels on the motherboard read:

PBA 623667-005
AA 623674-005

And on rather modern looking flash-like chip to the left of one of the PCI slots there is another label: 623776-001

Bios string is supposed to be - 1.00.xx.AF1: Premiere/PCI Expandable Desktop (Batman) - but that's off the internets and I don't know how reliable that is.

That's all I got. I've been trying to make the ting post for the past week - no dice - since it will fire up in bios recovery mode, I assume bios i bad. If one of you guys has the same MB and can post your bios I'd be very grateful.

Reply 1 of 27, by QBiN

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Just googling, I found at least three sites with downloadable AF1 BIOS packages for your board.

(Search pages for "AF1")
http://r3tr0.de/mirror/ftp.mpoli.fi/hardware/ … NTEL/index.html
http://www.motherboards.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9924
http://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=38653

I would try formatting a plain DOS floppy and put only the BIOS files from one of the above packages on the floppy and see if it'll recover that way.

Here's a dumb question... Have you ruled out all other issues that would keep a motherboard from a basic POST (e.g. video, RAM, etc.) ?

Reply 2 of 27, by kanecvr

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Wow, that was quick!

Unfortunately it's mostly the same links I've stumbled upon while googling. The first link is the only one to provide a download for my motherboard, but it's an "update bios". Some blocks are missing and the recovery procedure hangs (starts to read the floppy, led stays on, no noise).

I need a complete bios dump from a working board... 🙁

I've tried two isa video cards (one tseng4000 and one oak) and two PCI cards (one S3 tro64 and one Cirrus Logic - but I doubt these would work since the PSU i'm using doesn't have the aux 3.3v connector). I'm using FPM ram since the board's manual doesn't say anything about EDO (thought I tried several EDO modules too)- all ram in pairs of two, just like the manual sais. The problem is, the board doesn't beep w/o ram and video. I've had several boards that don't beep w/o ram (namely a FIC 486-vip-io) - so I tried testing with as well.

The CPU gets warm, and so do the intel PCI set chips. That's the only indication I have that the board is functional... I'm hoping it's the bios since it will beep and ask for ram with the recovery pins shorted.

Reply 4 of 27, by HighTreason

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I have a working board, it's in the parts tray, but I shall set about trying to dump it for you as soon as I get back from buying some smokes.

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Reply 5 of 27, by kanecvr

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Thanks a million guys. Meantime, here's some pics of he board:

Attachments

Reply 7 of 27, by mockingbird

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If the correct BIOS string is "AF1", like you mentioned, then this is the correct (And latest) BIOS:

ftp://download.intel.nl/support/motherboards/ … os/10008af1.exe

The BIOS referenced originally is for the "Robin" board (according to the release notes).

There is a "BIOSAF1.REC" in it, which is probably the recovery file. You might try just copying the files to a floppy and trying the recovery with this instead.

BIOS 1.00.08.AF1 - BatI/O (Standard) Fixed ATI PCI Video Problem o Support for SIO.G device o IDE Resource Allocation was added. […]
Show full quote

BIOS 1.00.08.AF1 - BatI/O (Standard)
Fixed ATI PCI Video Problem
o Support for SIO.G device
o IDE Resource Allocation was added.
o PIO Mode 3 was added.
o EMM386 work around that was implemented was taken out since there is a new version of the EMM386.EXE which fixes the 32 BIT access problem.

Good luck.

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Reply 9 of 27, by HighTreason

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Unfortunately I can't get to the PSU I require until tomorrow at the earliest.

I'm really sorry man, I'll get it done ASAP.

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Reply 11 of 27, by NJRoadfan

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Its very likely the BIOS recovery requires a full boot disk with an autoexec.bat launching the flasher (that was the case with P4 era Intel boards). Intel should have instructions or includes an autoexec.bat to go with the flasher and BIOS image to put on a boot disk.

The BIOS recovery block is VERY bare bones, so you have to do this "blind" without any video output with feedback. Normally the disk will read for a minute or two, then the machine will beep when the flash is complete. At that point a reboot will result in a restored BIOS POSTing.

Reply 12 of 27, by QBiN

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NJRoadfan wrote:

Its very likely the BIOS recovery requires a full boot disk with an autoexec.bat launching the flasher (that was the case with P4 era Intel boards). Intel should have instructions or includes an autoexec.bat to go with the flasher and BIOS image to put on a boot disk.

The BIOS recovery block is VERY bare bones, so you have to do this "blind" without any video output with feedback. Normally the disk will read for a minute or two, then the machine will beep when the flash is complete. At that point a reboot will result in a restored BIOS POSTing.

How would it be possible to boot a recovery floppy when the system won't even POST? That doesn't seem to follow. I'm not saying the recovery block method is necessarily easy or straight forward, but I believe it's the option at this point.

Reply 13 of 27, by kanecvr

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Good question @QBiN- well, if you look at the top of the motherboard, you'll see tree sets of twin jumper blocks - the ones closest to the ram slots are "reset cmos/normal operation" and "recovery mode boot/normal boot". When I set the batman to recovery mode boot, it will beep once, then read the FDD. That's about it - no video, no nothing except for one beep and FDD activity. According to the manual, this is used to recover BIOS from a floppy drive. In normal mode it does nothing - no beeps, no post.

@HighTreason - I'm watching one of your videos while waiting for that bios dump. I'm trying to optimise Duke3D to run as fast as possible on my freshly built Am486DX4/FIC 486-VIP-IO/S3 Trio64 PCI/Creative Sound Blaster PRO 2.0 CT2600- for some reason it's underperforming a bit (at least in regards to what I remember my old 586 could do back in the day. Still regret not keeping that system.

As a matter of fact, it's one of your videos that reminded me I had the socket 4 board someware in my attic - so I dug it up, cleaned it and have been trying to make it run for a while now.

@NJRoadfan - will do -i'll try to execute the file on one of my K6 pc's and create a floppy using the provided disk maker. Will update when done.

Reply 14 of 27, by QBiN

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kanecvr wrote:

Good question @QBiN- well, if you look at the top of the motherboard, you'll see tree sets of twin jumper blocks - the ones closest to the ram slots are "reset cmos/normal operation" and "recovery mode boot/normal boot". When I set the batman to recovery mode boot, it will beep once, then read the FDD. That's about it - no video, no nothing except for one beep and FDD activity. According to the manual, this is used to recover BIOS from a floppy drive. In normal mode it does nothing - no beeps, no post.

Thanks. No, I get that. My question was more to NJroadfan... There's no way to "boot" a normal DOS floppy and run the flashing utility if the machine itself can't POST. No POST, no booting a DOS floppy regardless of what's on it.

Recovery mode seems to be the only path forward.

Reply 15 of 27, by HighTreason

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Bleh, what an unyielding board. Here is a disk image, both as a VFD and a self extracting .exe which should run in Win9x; https://www.mediafire.com/?ztlxrp4d4r6n5i6

Avast picks this up as AntiCmos-A, I suspect this is just the routine used to flash the BIOS being detected as malicious, but NSSI did kick off about something... All I can say is I've had no problems with it but you use it at your own risk... I havent tested if this will actually work though, I guess I can if you really want me to, I don't mind turning that board into a paperweight as it's faulty anyway and I could probably top-hat the IC and get it back if I really wanted to.

This disk image contains two versions of the BIOS, the recovery mode should find one of them with any luck.

Before you try anything, seems like a silly suggestion, but check the frequency jumper actually has something on it, when I first powered on, nothing happened and it seems that this jumper somehow came off.

As for the 486, I found that FIC board to be a bit funny, it never ran quite as fast as the others did and also did weird things with writeback CPUs... If you have a spare VLB video card try swapping the S3 for that as it might improve things, I found the PCI to be slower. Otherwise, maybe you can alter the PCI clock in the BIOS to get a boost - can't remember if that board does that and can't check because I replaced mine with a completely different machine which I am still building... If all else fails, throw a Pentium OverDrive at it, that is what I have in the machine replacing both that 486 and the Pentium 60.

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Reply 16 of 27, by mockingbird

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That's the wrong BIOS... I think BIOS string AF2 is the "Batman's Revenge" board. He needs the AF1 BIOS but not the Intel upgrade but rather a dump of the actual CMOS chip...

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Reply 17 of 27, by HighTreason

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You sure? That board looks identical to mine, the AF1 appears to have a SCSI module in it.

Of course, you could be right. BUT correlating the numbers with the Googles yields pages like this one; http://www.motherboards.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21675

Which seem to imply this is an AF2 board and would thus explain why the AF1 BIOS didn't work... Actually, you could probably just download AF2 BIOS and try that then if you didn't already, it might be better than the one my board came with as I suspect Gateway or someone tampered with it.

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Reply 18 of 27, by kanecvr

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Thanks, I'll give it a go - will try the bios you provided and report back tomorrow. Right now my dad is coming over and I'm having him sleep in the room i use as my computer lab.

I happen to have tree VLB boards - I haven't tested any of them but I will. The 486 is very sluggish - Duke 3D runs poorly, even Heretic has hiccups... My 586 with a FIC 486-VIP-IO2 could run quake at acceptable framerates with a 2MB Cirrus PCI card - so I was expecting better performance out of this machine - especially at 40MHz fsb / 40MHz PCI clock. The CPU scores 35 in speedsys @ 100MHz and 46 @ 120MHz. Could the miss-matched ram have anything to do with it? Right now I'm using a 4MB FPM simm in one slot and one 8MB FPM in another - don't have anything else that's not EDO...

EDIT - Yes, I made sure all jumpers are set up correctly according to the manual before I even turned it on.

Reply 19 of 27, by kanecvr

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Ok - so related to my 486 system's poor performance - I took your advice and installed a VLB card - and I have to say, the performance difference is quite visible!

I have 3 Cirrus Logic VLB cards I picked up at a collection center (because I thought they looked cool but had no ideea what a VLB bus was a the time) 2x CL-GD5424-80QC-C and one 2x CL-GD5428-80QC-C - all with 1MB of video memory. One of the GD5424 cards doesn't seem to work, the other one works but I get "Unsupported Resolution" from my display in some apps - but the GD5428 works great (and has four unpopulated VRAM slots for the bigger chips so I can upgrade it to 2 MB). Windows is smoother, Duke3D became playable (now it's just an issue of RAM since Duke3D likes 16mb or more and I have 12) - Stargunner is a lot smoother, and Heretic works like it should now. Thanks for the suggestion, I would have never thought of trying these cards! (I forgot I had them 😁). There is quite a frequency difference betwenn the VLB cards and the S3 - The 5424's run at 80MHz core and 60MHz VRAM, while the 5428 GUI accelerator runs are a whopping 85MHz core and 65MHz vram (VS the 65/60MHz for the S3).

Using a VLB card also allowed me to try the 50MHz bus on my FIC 486-VIP-IO, and the PC booted up at 150MHz - even tried some dos games with no issues whatsoever. I actually like this MB. I had no issues with PCI cards - both the S3 Trio64 and the 3Com Parallel Talking III XT work with no issues (@FSB / PCI 2/1 setting) and the system is pretty stable overall (if a little slow). I won't keep the CPU at 150MHz since I only own two of them and the're getting pretty scarce in my parts (took me two months to find reasonably priced parts to put this system together).

I'll try the Batman MB tomorow since this is all I can do today.

Last edited by kanecvr on 2015-04-26, 00:52. Edited 5 times in total.