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Basic BIOS Options Missing - MS-6714 (Socket 478)

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First post, by Xuth

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Hi all - so I just grabbed an MSI MS-6714 (Ver 5) from eBay. It works (as in boots fine to an existing Win9x installation) but the bios appears to be hugely stripped down.

In all the documentation I've found relating to the 6714s there should be a lot more options in the bios menu and this is apparent by the absence of 'standard' stuff like being able to turn on the floppy disk controller (which is how I discovered the issue - my floppy drive is completely power-dead in this PC despite definitely being a feature).

I also can't even turn off the full-screen logo feature in order to see the bios details on boot-up.

It's not that these features are greyed out either - they're just completely absent!

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this (I suspect just a crappy OEM bios version)? I have tried to flash a bios based on the board revision but it's giving me the "the file bios lock string does match with your system" on every one I've tried from the MSI website... and a few from more sketchy sources after that. With the full-screen logo in the way I can't see what version is currently here...

I presume I'm just stuck, but thought I would check there isn't some hidden but obvious way to resolve this before I consign it to the 'box of failed projects'.

Thanks!

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    How the BIOS looks for me (Advanced Features Screen)
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    How the BIOS should look (Advanced Features Screen)
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Reply 1 of 6, by Rawit

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You could dump the original BIOS and try to find a version of ModBin that works with it. ModBin allows you to enable "hidden" features. There is a chance the options are in the BIOS but not just displayed.

YouTube

Reply 3 of 6, by Horun

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Curious if your board is green ? The retail MSI boards are generally red and their OEM versions are green colored (have a green oem msi as well as retail red variants of a diff soc 478).

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 4 of 6, by Doornkaat

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You could try flashing the non-OEM BIOS with UniFlash 1.40.
The BIOS may actually be incompatible (though I doubt it) so make a backup of the original BIOS and remember there's a chance you'll brick your board if you don't have any other way of flashing back the original BIOS.

Reply 5 of 6, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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If you're using AWDFLASH you could try adding the /NBL switch to the command line (No BIOS Lock) - a search indicates this has worked on various MSI boards in the past (on the recommendation of MSI Tech Support), though not sure how it would work if the board is a limited OEM version.

Reply 6 of 6, by Xuth

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Horun wrote on 2021-03-10, 23:16:

Curious if your board is green ? The retail MSI boards are generally red and their OEM versions are green colored (have a green oem msi as well as retail red variants of a diff soc 478).

It's red actually - leading me to wonder if someone's simply flashed a bad bios in its past.

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-03-11, 04:49:

You could try flashing the non-OEM BIOS with UniFlash 1.40.
The BIOS may actually be incompatible (though I doubt it) so make a backup of the original BIOS and remember there's a chance you'll brick your board if you don't have any other way of flashing back the original BIOS.

Worth a try, thanks. I was using whatever software came bundled with the bios so it's probably less effective at bypassing hard locks? It's effectively bricked already since there are so few basic features I can turn on!

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2021-03-11, 06:24:

If you're using AWDFLASH you could try adding the /NBL switch to the command line (No BIOS Lock) - a search indicates this has worked on various MSI boards in the past (on the recommendation of MSI Tech Support), though not sure how it would work if the board is a limited OEM version.

Will give this a try, thanks. I'm not all that experienced with older bios flashing so I'll do a bit of reading around on this.

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