and a last picture from boot. Bios version seems old. ( battery is dead)

I downloaded the bios update there:
http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/ftp-archives/ftp … 486/486-pvt-io/

A person there has a bios update problem similar to mine:

https://alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.fic.narkiv … ails-every-time

This is my motherboard:

https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/F/F … 486-PVT-IO.html

Thanks a lot for answers or help guys ! Its really appreciated a lot !

I'm pretty sure the board uses an OTP EPROM so you cannot update the BIOS from software, since the chip can only be written once and that's already been done. Chances are you can pop in a 29F010 type NOR flash but chances are you need to burn the new BIOS on it with a dedicated programmer device or maybe hot-socket with a newer Pentium era motherboard.

You can upgrade to 2MB by adding 2 chips from another video card etc., but pay very careful attention to chip orientation. Wrong way will kill the chip and most probably the card with it.

Tiido wrote on 2020-09-29, 15:02:

I'm pretty sure the board uses an OTP EPROM so you cannot update the BIOS from software, since the chip can only be written once and that's already been done. Chances are you can pop in a 29F010 type NOR flash but chances are you need to burn the new BIOS on it with a dedicated programmer device or maybe hot-socket with a newer Pentium era motherboard.

You can upgrade to 2MB by adding 2 chips from another video card etc., but pay very careful attention to chip orientation. Wrong way will kill the chip and most probably the card with it.

Thanks for answer. So for the bios, i cant do anything more. I dont have Nor flash or programmer device. Anyway i dont know at all how work these devices. So i will try my 4gb and 2.1gb HDD with this bios version. Thanks for the memory chips tips. I will do it and be careful, my father is a electronic technician it will help me.

But im still disappointed about that bios that cant be updated.

Any ideas only the 504mb Hard disk work.
I really want at least my 2.1gb or 4.3gb hard disk to work. Thanks for answer or help.

I'm happy i still got my 2.1gb to work. Is it better to choose Normal, LBA or Large? Thanks

Edit: i just read the difference, its ok.

But i cant get any hard disk to detect more than 2.0gb

Most hard disks work correctly even 20gb hard disk, but all disk detect 2.0gb only. I tried Normal, LBA and Large option.

Is it a way to get 8GB working ? When reading I thought that LBA could get hard disk to work with 8GB ? Thanks for answer and help.

( Note: i can live with 2.0gb but i prefer 8gb. 504mb was not enough 😀 )

Edit: Fdisk detect the 8gb hard disk. And i made 4 2gb partitions. Is it ok, even if bios only see a 2gb hard disk ? thanks.

Edit: The Ati Sound card is a Stereo F/X CD with yamaha opl3 chip. It seems very rare and a expensive card i just checked on ebay. I could be interested to sell it, but i dont think we can sell on vogons forum.

I purchased a roll of 10 "HYB514171BJ-60 256k x 16-Bit Dynamic RAM SOJ40" and upgraded all of my SOJ40 socketed video cards, including a Cirrus 5429 VLB card. It was easy. Just lined up the 1 pins, popped in the chips and it worked. Not sure it was particularly useful. The slow ramdacs of that period rarely do > 1024 x 768 x 256 without slipping into interlaced display and my LCD monitors don't sync with interlaced. And dos performance is unchanged after the upgrade. But $13 to upgrade 5 cards? That's a fun low cost, low risk, low reward project. The cards certainly look more potent with those sockets filled!

really nice PC!
Redhill really likes this motherboard as well 😀
https://redhill.net.au/b/b-95.html

Cirrus logic made good, fast VLB cards. It wont beat the likes of Tseng but still in the top 5 where upgrading doesn't make any sense.

Soundcard is somewhat rare but nothing special. I only get I ebay result from someone in Poland with a stupid price (More then a Gus? He's dreaming) it maybe worth something to a collector but doubt you'll get more and probably less then what Sound Blaster AWE sells for.
Re: ATI STEREO F/X original driver disks found!

Upgrading the Video memory is only going to matter in windows, with 1MB you'll max out at 640*480 24-bit colour or 800*600 16-bit colour. Both fine for a 486 but admit 2MB is nicer, full tabel can be found here. https://www.danielsevo.com/bocg/bocg_screenres.htm

It's a later 486 motherboard so not surprised it supports drives larger then 500MB, Is a bit of a worry BIOS isn't showing the correct number. See how you go but I wouldn't trust it just yet. Try filling a drive and seeing if it does funny things as the drive starts reaching capacity.

douglar wrote on 2020-09-30, 00:38:

I purchased a roll of 10 "HYB514171BJ-60 256k x 16-Bit Dynamic RAM SOJ40" and upgraded all of my SOJ40 socketed video cards, including a Cirrus 5429 VLB card. It was easy. Just lined up the 1 pins, popped in the chips and it worked. Not sure it was particularly useful. The slow ramdacs of that period rarely do > 1024 x 768 x 256 without slipping into interlaced display and my LCD monitors don't sync with interlaced. And dos performance is unchanged after the upgrade. But $13 to upgrade 5 cards? That's a fun low cost, low risk, low reward project. The cards certainly look more potent with those sockets filled!

I tried several times to get the 2 chips working correctly. The video card detect 2mb, but at each time i tried the video card with a game ( keen4 or doom) i got strange color glitch, and strange square of color anywhere in the screen or discoloration on the keen character or ennemies. So i remove the chips for now. they are 70ns like the one integrated on the video card.

renejr902 wrote on 2020-09-30, 14:46:

douglar wrote on 2020-09-30, 00:38:

I purchased a roll of 10 "HYB514171BJ-60 256k x 16-Bit Dynamic RAM SOJ40" and upgraded all of my SOJ40 socketed video cards, including a Cirrus 5429 VLB card. It was easy. Just lined up the 1 pins, popped in the chips and it worked. Not sure it was particularly useful. The slow ramdacs of that period rarely do > 1024 x 768 x 256 without slipping into interlaced display and my LCD monitors don't sync with interlaced. And dos performance is unchanged after the upgrade. But $13 to upgrade 5 cards? That's a fun low cost, low risk, low reward project. The cards certainly look more potent with those sockets filled!

I tried several times to get the 2 chips working correctly. The video card detect 2mb, but at each time i tried the video card with a game ( keen4 or doom) i got strange color glitch, and strange square of color anywhere in the screen or discoloration on the keen character or ennemies. So i remove the chips for now. they are 70ns like the one integrated on the video card.

Great! Thanks so much for all these answers. Until now disk work great, but i didnt test much the other partitions until now except for C. Do you if the bios version could be updated ? I know someone told me he thinks not. Thanks

If the bios file you found are valid, then you can definitely update the bios. However if your ROM is really just read only or has to be erased with UV light, your motherboard won't be capable of flashing it (and it may not even have the circuit to flash a eeprom either)

Now anyone with a programmer can flash a ROM properly so you might be able to get a flashed bios from someone else.

If you ever fully disassemble your pc, would you like to take a photo of it ?
You used stason.org as a manual, but we made a improved version of the same database over here (in which you can add bios, photos and manuals) http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/2393

Deksor wrote on 2020-10-01, 06:17:

If the bios file you found are valid, then you can definitely update the bios. However if your ROM is really just read only or h […]
Show full quote

If the bios file you found are valid, then you can definitely update the bios. However if your ROM is really just read only or has to be erased with UV light, your motherboard won't be capable of flashing it (and it may not even have the circuit to flash a eeprom either)

Now anyone with a programmer can flash a ROM properly so you might be able to get a flashed bios from someone else.

If you ever fully disassemble your pc, would you like to take a photo of it ?
You used stason.org as a manual, but we made a improved version of the same database over here (in which you can add bios, photos and manuals) http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/2393

Hi!
Cannot find here a more appropriate post. As I am new in these issue, I have to UV erase an EEPROM that is the BIOS of 486 VESA Pine Technology PT-430 mainboard.
I know if I get the full BIN file I could do it with an EEPROM programmer: but... With my ingenuousness I thought to find these old BIN files easy on the web, and it seems not to be so.
I have a label upon the BIOS saying: "AMIBIOS/AMERICAN MEGATRENDS/486 DX ISA BIOS/(C) 1992/AB8905600"
The EEPROM below is a TEXAS INSTRUMENTS 27C512-15, it could be easy to find one of these chips "blank" if that I have is faulty.
As motherboards won't boot and cannot see any video signal, cannot read any details of the BIOS on screen and cannot kill in any way the usual "10 beeps" of the death,
no way to clear the BIOS and load default setup: I tried everything.

Please be honest/rude with me, if mine is only an illusion tell me clearly, I am afraid to need another user with the same motherboards AND an EEPROM programmer to
execute the download of his BIN file... and this is so unlikey to be "de facto" impossible.

Thanks for any kind of answer,
Cheers! 😀

This should be broken into another thread.

In any case, have you replaced the CMOS battery? did the old battery leak and damage any traces?

Pics of the board would help.

We do have that board with bios files here
http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/4230

However I agree with cyclone3d : you should make a separate thread and upload photos of your board. This board has a battery that can leak and destroy traces. Remove it ASAP !

Also the fact your board beeps makes me think that the BIOS is fine or at least halfway functional.
Check the battery/saving feature on the motherboard. Maybe this board needs some power from the cmos battery to post ?

Deksor wrote on 2020-12-22, 09:16:

We do have that board with bios files here http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/4230 […]
Show full quote

We do have that board with bios files here
http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/4230

However I agree with cyclone3d : you should make a separate thread and upload photos of your board. This board has a battery that can leak and destroy traces. Remove it ASAP !

Also the fact your board beeps makes me think that the BIOS is fine or at least halfway functional.
Check the battery/saving feature on the motherboard. Maybe this board needs some power from the cmos battery to post ?

Thank you Deksor and Cyclone,
I know I am posting in the wrong place, but as I am a "newbie" and a moderator explained to me I cannot upload anything on VOGONS Driver Library,
I simply thought I could not open a "new thread" too, I cannot find the button and I find not easy to search for an appropriate place here for my posts.
The truth is that I am getting rather old to use internet 😀 When I was active in this field internet was yet to arrive and it came not just a couple of years
later! As I am too blind to use smartphones, pics I do are made with old cameras, quality is poor. This to excuse myself... and for the same reason I could
not find the BIN file by myself in the past days, I will need a younger assistant 😀

So just for curiorisy, I attach the pic of the mainboard and a detail, hoping to be in the future able to manage an independent thread, this site is great,
cannot imagine my old working with these modern facilities!!!
Mobo came in my mind with battery desoldered by others, and I use isopropyl alcool to clear much as I could the leakage of the old battery.
Otherwise JP2 on the right has pins for external battery and on the underside I see everything clean and nothing disturbing the external power. On the
right of the mainboard you could see an external socket with a lithium battery 3,6 V as the original one. Some 486 mobo needs 3,6 V, on Pentium I
motherboard I use a socket for 3 V only Cr2032. I have a good multimeter, there is full power...
I do not post anything at first difficulties, I made a million attempts, and with or without battery I got the same results. Note that beep codes are not
so coherent, sometimes I got different beeps with the same test only booting twice in a row! IMHO the mainboard has to boot without power battery the same,
it is used for storing data in the CMOS or anyway I always thought this.

Before throwing the mainboard into the trash bin, as it has also the daughterboard to lower the voltage from 5 V to 3.3 V as per DX4/100 Mhz and it looks
good, I did want to do the extreme thing possible...

Thank you again, sorry for you to deal with an old man 😀))

None of my FIC socket 3 boards came with flashable EEPROMs either, but there is a way to update bios w/o an eeprom burner - at least on my FIC 486-VIP-IO2. What I did is I pulled an EEPROM off a dead socket 7 motherboard, and did a hot flash using another machine.

I copied UNIFLASH and the new bios file onto one of my socket 7 machines, then I pulled the EEPROM while the machine was running. Then I plugged in the EEPROM I sourced for the FIC motherboard, and flashed it using UNIFLASH. After that, I put the new EEPROM into my 486-VIP-IO2, moved the EEPROM voltage jumper from 12v to 5v, and cleared CMOS. A bit fiddly, but it worked.

Socket3 wrote on 2020-12-23, 06:58:

I copied UNIFLASH and the new bios file onto one of my socket 7 machines, then I pulled the EEPROM while the machine was running. Then I plugged in the EEPROM I sourced for the FIC motherboard, and flashed it using UNIFLASH. After that, I put the new EEPROM into my 486-VIP-IO2, moved the EEPROM voltage jumper from 12v to 5v, and cleared CMOS. A bit fiddly, but it worked.

Wow, I'd be scared to even attempt that. Much respect.

Short question:
Will the BIOS update just fix the Y2000 issue so it won't switch from 31.12.1999 t0 01.01.1900?
Is the effort really worth it, as it won't happen again?
Or does the updated BIOS also support larger drives which would indeed justify the effort?

BinaryDemon wrote on 2020-12-23, 07:15:

Socket3 wrote on 2020-12-23, 06:58:

I copied UNIFLASH and the new bios file onto one of my socket 7 machines, then I pulled the EEPROM while the machine was running. Then I plugged in the EEPROM I sourced for the FIC motherboard, and flashed it using UNIFLASH. After that, I put the new EEPROM into my 486-VIP-IO2, moved the EEPROM voltage jumper from 12v to 5v, and cleared CMOS. A bit fiddly, but it worked.

Wow, I'd be scared to even attempt that. Much respect.

the HOTflash procedure. When you have a non-bootable board and no programmer device around, this is the next best thing. Pay attention with programming voltages and size of the chips etc, but other than that, it is quite safe.