Boot into DOS, by pressing F8 during boot time (as soon as seeing "starting Windows 98" on the screen) and choosing "command prompt only" from the boot menu. Or press directly Shift+F5. This is the next best thing to booting from a floppy.

Flashing a BIOS is a common and simple task, but trying to do it under ancient versions of Windows is a bit on the pushing side of things, and not recomended to say the least.

In short, use DOS, do not complicate things unneccessarily.

Thanks, is it safe to do so using the C drive for the files?

gladders wrote:

Thanks, is it safe to do so using the C drive for the files?

I've done it numerous times, in situations like a FDD is out of question. No worries I guess.

I need to clearly say that: BIOS upgrade has its risks. The possibility of failure is small (never happend to me in my computer caring life of 20+ years and probably about 100+ BIOS flashes) but it is there.

tayyare wrote:

I've done it numerous times, in situations like a FDD is out of question. No worries I guess.

I need to clearly say that: BIOS upgrade has its risks. The possibility of failure is small (never happend to me in my computer caring life of 20+ years and probably about 100+ BIOS flashes) but it is there.

Power failure while flashing, for instance, could brick your machine until you're able to rewrite the BIOS.

gdjacobs wrote:

tayyare wrote:

I've done it numerous times, in situations like a FDD is out of question. No worries I guess.

I need to clearly say that: BIOS upgrade has its risks. The possibility of failure is small (never happend to me in my computer caring life of 20+ years and probably about 100+ BIOS flashes) but it is there.

Power failure while flashing, for instance, could brick your machine until you're able to rewrite the BIOS.

Not only for BIOS flashing of course, but also for avoiding many many other problems that can be caused by power shortages and premature shotdowns, I strongly suggest a proper UPS.

The program is terrible and doesn't work. I used it in the past without switches.
But now it just beeps and shows an empty window. The syntax is atrocious, i guess to make the backup i must write:
"awdflash 7wmv4ca1.bin backup.bin /pn/sy"
This is from a 95c safe mode command prompt with 8.99. Does the backup file need to exist first? That would be absurd. And i think DOS is not case sensitive.
Help says:
"
Usage: AWDFLASH [FileName1] [FileName2] [/<sw>[/<sw>...]]
FileName1 : New BIOS Name For Flash Programming
FileName2 : BIOS File For Backing-up the Original BIOS
<Swtches> ?: Show Help Messages
py: Program Flash Memory
pn: No Flash Programming
sy: Backup Original BIOS To Disk File
sn: No Original BIOS Backup
"
The flash type is empty too. Is this becouse it's an unsupported flash? It gives no errors.
The board is from 99 and it has a square flash chip. It's the Soyo SY-7IWM/L.
Edit: awdflash only shows the flash chip after entering the filename, i've watched a video. You're forced to enter a filename and reset no way to quit.
Better use uniflash 1.40, awdflash is a badly broken program. BTW the chip is the Intel 82802AB.

dondiego wrote on 2022-09-30, 09:54:

The flash type is empty too. Is this becouse it's an unsupported flash? It gives no errors. The board is from 99 and it has a sq […]
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The flash type is empty too. Is this becouse it's an unsupported flash? It gives no errors.
The board is from 99 and it has a square flash chip. It's the Soyo SY-7IWM/L.
Edit: awdflash only shows the flash chip after entering the filename, i've watched a video. You're forced to enter a filename and reset no way to quit.
Better use uniflash 1.40, awdflash is a badly broken program. BTW the chip is the Intel 82802AB.

several months late in responding but I think you are using the wrong or incompatible version of AWDFlash.
the 8.99 version of awdflash only works on certain motherboards made in the 21st century (year 2001 & above).
for very old boards like yours made in 1999 & earlier, you need to use an older version of awdflash like those from
version 7.xx.

try downloading & using any of the 7.xx versions of awdflash from here (from 7.98 & older)
https://www.wimsbios.com/awardflasher.jsp#gsc.tab=0

If later versions are incompatible with old boards then it's even worse, that program is trash. In the end i used uniflash.

gladders wrote on 2018-06-14, 08:15:

[...]

I'd rather not use DOS, as my floppy drive needs some TLC before it'll work.

DOS most definitely does NOT automatically mean using the floppy. Never use floppy for BIOS flashing unless you're performing a bootblock recovery.

Just put the image on the hard drive and the flash application, boot into DOS (real native DOS, not Windows DOS mode) and do the deed. In general I far prefer Uniflash over the proprietary flash programs, but it's not supported on all motherboards. Don't worry about a misflash in that situation: if it's not supported, it won't flash at all.

Note that first hit on Google on 'uniflash' these days is an unrelated Texas Instruments flash tool for MCUs. There's also a Github open source project with the same name relating to Ethereum digital currency. Neither are what you want for motherboard. What you want is Uniflash 1.40, available here, for example.