There is a BIOS update available from Compaq .
I have attached the update and an extracted README .

brian105 wrote on 2020-06-01, 04:26:

I'm trying to dump the BIOS from my Presario 5284 with an MVP3 and not finding much luck. I have absolutely no idea which BIOS t […]
Show full quote

I'm trying to dump the BIOS from my Presario 5284 with an MVP3 and not finding much luck. I have absolutely no idea which BIOS this is based on:

I've tried multiple BIOS dumping methods (all software based since I have no EEPROM programmers) including basically all AMI/Award/Phoenix flashers which all fail to do anything. UniFlash can't detect some info, but successfully dumps 1 mbit of the BIOS. Unfortunately, according to Sandra 99 the BIOS is 2 mbit and somebody already verified for me that the 1mbit dump looks exactly like a 2mbit dump chopped in half.
I also tried Flashrom in DOS, which detects the VIA chipset but says there's no EEPROM detected. Now, I thought by 1999 most machines would have had EEPROMs but maybe I'm glorifying Compaq and they actually put an EPROM instead to save money because screw customers. Maybe it just isn't detecting properly? No idea.
Does anybody have another way which can be used to dump the BIOS? (software based stuff)

Maybe the chip is 2Mib but the actual BIOS is just 1Mib and there are two copies of the BIOS (or two different versions of it) so if a flash fails there is a way to recover the board?

darry wrote on 2020-06-01, 04:53:

There is a BIOS update available from Compaq .
I have attached the update and an extracted README .

I thought of getting the dump from there before, but unfortunately the format of the BIOS files extracted is a bit weird. I forgot the exact format, but it was something like .e35 or something similar. I attached the dumped BIOS from UniFlash, maybe it's actually the whole thing.

The update darry posted creates a boot floppy. The ROMPAQ program on the floppy can decompress the custom image format:

1rompaq.exe /d strm6a10.f52 out.bin

The result is a 2 Megabit image, of which the latter half is identical to the dump file.

Hard to say whether the decompressed image is complete, though. It starts with a lot of zeroes.

Ah, didn't know that it could be used that way. Thanks. Do you know what kind of BIOS brand it is based on?

brian105 wrote on 2020-06-01, 15:34:

Ah, didn't know that it could be used that way. Thanks. Do you know what kind of BIOS brand it is based on?

Not entirely sure, but it should be an old Phoenix variant. At least there are some "BC" and "BCPCMP" header structures, though it lacks the BCPSYS anchor of more recent Phoenix images.

DenizOezmen wrote on 2020-06-01, 20:43:

brian105 wrote on 2020-06-01, 15:34:

Ah, didn't know that it could be used that way. Thanks. Do you know what kind of BIOS brand it is based on?

Not entirely sure, but it should be an old Phoenix variant. At least there are some "BC" and "BCPCMP" header structures, though it lacks the BCPSYS anchor of more recent Phoenix images.

Any idea of an editor which can edit stuff from this time period? The phoenix BIOS editor I see on google seems to be made for newer stuff and can't open this .bin.

brian105 wrote on 2020-06-01, 21:02:

DenizOezmen wrote on 2020-06-01, 20:43:

brian105 wrote on 2020-06-01, 15:34:

Ah, didn't know that it could be used that way. Thanks. Do you know what kind of BIOS brand it is based on?

Not entirely sure, but it should be an old Phoenix variant. At least there are some "BC" and "BCPCMP" header structures, though it lacks the BCPSYS anchor of more recent Phoenix images.

Any idea of an editor which can edit stuff from this time period? The phoenix BIOS editor I see on google seems to be made for newer stuff and can't open this .bin.

Unfortunately not, no. I tried some smaller tools, but most wouldn't recognize the image. One did (phoedeco), but the decompression results didn't look convincing.

Is this still an overclocking issue? - take it you didn't get anywhere with the links in this thread BIOS Flashing on a Compaq Presario 5284

I was attempting to check whether the BIOS supported the K6-2+ or 3+ before buying them, to make sure I wasn't buying a paperweight. Overclocking didn't help, the 450 didn't even get to 500 without errors. Seems realistically the only way to test it is to just buy the CPU and hope it works.