I think it's feasible to do it, but will require some work, as the P4P800 uses a 3com NIC as opposed to the Intel CSA on the P4P800-VM. (btw I'm the one who flashed different manufacturers' BIOSes - still doing this but with my P4P800 (full ATX) and so far have got two BIOSes to work perfectly and with no problems, other than one of them complaining about a unknown BIOS flash chip during boot)

I might be able to look into it but it's going to take some time as I first have to be sure the BIOS won't get corrupt, and then I have to replace the NIC driver to look for the Intel CSA (82547EI) instead of the 3com/MARVELL chip that is present on the P4P800.

Hey man how's it going, I got your PM but I can't seem to reply to it (maybe because I don't have enough posts on this board). Yeah I managed to overclock this board via software overclocking with ClockGen

PcBytes wrote:

I think it's feasible to do it, but will require some work, as the P4P800 uses a 3com NIC as opposed to the Intel CSA on the P4P800-VM. (btw I'm the one who flashed different manufacturers' BIOSes - still doing this but with my P4P800 (full ATX) and so far have got two BIOSes to work perfectly and with no problems, other than one of them complaining about a unknown BIOS flash chip during boot)

I might be able to look into it but it's going to take some time as I first have to be sure the BIOS won't get corrupt, and then I have to replace the NIC driver to look for the Intel CSA (82547EI) instead of the 3com/MARVELL chip that is present on the P4P800.

If you do get this functional it would be an incredible gem for this community as there aren't any Socket 478 mATX boards capable of overclocking (at least not that I've found compatible with the 3.2 and 3.4ghz p4 Extreme Editions)

conenubi701 wrote:

PcBytes wrote:

I think it's feasible to do it, but will require some work, as the P4P800 uses a 3com NIC as opposed to the Intel CSA on the P4P800-VM. (btw I'm the one who flashed different manufacturers' BIOSes - still doing this but with my P4P800 (full ATX) and so far have got two BIOSes to work perfectly and with no problems, other than one of them complaining about a unknown BIOS flash chip during boot)

I might be able to look into it but it's going to take some time as I first have to be sure the BIOS won't get corrupt, and then I have to replace the NIC driver to look for the Intel CSA (82547EI) instead of the 3com/MARVELL chip that is present on the P4P800.

If you do get this functional it would be an incredible gem for this community as there aren't any Socket 478 mATX boards capable of overclocking (at least not that I've found compatible with the 3.2 and 3.4ghz p4 Extreme Editions)

Well, I did look on some old guides (believe me, I'm pretty rusty - I've laid off AMI BIOS modding since a long time ago, last board I've ever did was the ASUS K8N and that was simply replace the BIOS splash screen, which wasn't even easy to begin with, unlike Award.) and checked the Vendor and Device IDs up.

I did manage to make the ROM, but for people who want to flash it - PLEASE, get a spare BIOS chip in case something goes balls, or find ANY means to recover your BIOS if it won't work.

I have made sure to remove most ROMs that would not have any impact during POST (mainly 24DF which is supposedly the RAID function present on the bigger P4P800, and ROMS related to a VIA RAID chip and finally the 3com NIC) and added the ROM to support onboard VGA (although I bet nobody would use that, but it's a good thing to have it there), as well as Intel CSA support.

I'm attaching the file, try at your own risk. I'm saying this because I don't own the board anymore (it died a long time ago due to a failing PSU) so I can't test it, but theoretically it should work just fine.

PcBytes wrote:

I did manage to make the ROM

I had to re-read this a few times to finally integrate the fact that you'd actually modded and uploaded a BIOS especially for this post. You're very generous - thank you so much.

I intend to use Afuwin to flash it - see attached for the options screen. Ignore the red highlights, its a generic image. What should I be checking and unchecking to get the greatest chance of a successful flash?

conenubi701 wrote:

Hey man how's it going, I got your PM but I can't seem to reply to it (maybe because I don't have enough posts on this board). Yeah I managed to overclock this board via software overclocking with ClockGen

No worries. I thought that might have been the case but pending the outcome of u/PcBytes excellent contribution, BIOS OCing might be back on the menu 😀

Again, PcBytes, you're a champ. Looking forward to giving this a shot. thumbsup

Whatever you do, NEVER EVER USE Windows flashers. I learnt this the hard way with another board.

For a successful and safe flash, use a FAT32 formatted USB drive and boot into Windows 98SE without CD-ROM support, then switch to the C:\ drive (which is the FAT32 formatted USB drive I told you to make earlier and put AFUDOS on). This is what I used to do on it to flash my BIOS, as my OS drive was NTFS.

I don't remember what AFUDOS version I used, but I think the one ASUS provides on their site will work. Just remember to use the "Ignore ROMID" switch when flashing - this will bypass the ROMID check altogether, otherwise it will fail saying ROMID mismatch.

Heeding your advice and used Afudos instead. Flashing process succeeds but on reboot I'm getting a 'bad bios checksum' error and have to restore the old bios version from floppy. Do any of the following switches need to be used in addition to /x?
• /P Program main bios image
• /B Program Boot Block
• /N Program NVRAM
• /C Destroy CMOS after update BIOS done
• /E Program Embedded Controller block if present
• /K Program all non-critical blocks
• /Kn Program n’th non-critical block only (n=0 – 7)
• /Q Quiet mode enable
• /REBOOT Reboot after update BIOS done
• /X Do not check ROM ID
• /S Display current system’s BIOS ROM ID
• /Ln Load CMOS default (n=0 - 1)
▪ L0: Load current CMOS optimal settings

Did it program the whole chip?

As far as I know it should have worked, as long as you use /p /b /n /c /x. I still suggest doing a BIOS chip hotswap before starting the flash procedure (it's PLCC32, and it has to be 512kb in size), as that eliminates the problem of a non-working board.

Hooray! The afudos switches worked. Boots fine into windows. Haven't tested all hardware functions but it's pretty stable. However any manual OC settings result in "Overclock failed" on reboot and a prompt to load defaults. This is even if the settings are just keeping everything at conservative (ie. Not Overclock) levels so it's a fault or conflict somewhere rather than the system being asked to operate faster than it can.

Also the system now can't restart itself - it requires power off/on a couple of times before it launches itself into BIOS.

Any ideas?
No obligation for further help on this obviously.
Cheers