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Replacing bios chip on AMI Enterprise III

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First post, by bstar

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I managed to unexpectedly snag an AMI Enterprise III a couple weeks ago when I met up with a guy to purchase a CRT. I've been messing with the board ever since. It has a somewhat rare RTC, so I had to do a battery mod to even get it to boot. That succeeded, but I still got a checksum error when it boots. Regardless, I was able to install DOS and run some programs successfully.

This morning I decided to flash a new bios and it seemed to initially work (flash beep codes seemed correct), but on restarting the bios dates did not change. I did some card swapping and now I get a beep code that corresponds with "bios needs replacing". I'm not sure what triggered the bios error, but my guess is that the flash actually failed and needed additional power cycles to manifest.

I'm 90% sure I just need to get a new bios chip and flash it- the checksum error I was initially getting was probably an indicator that the bios had issues to begin with.

Can anyone recommend a flasher and compatible chips? Keep in mind I'm a complete noob with this type of issue.

My actual board pic:
whPWy89.jpeg

A thread about my board (not my thread):
AMI Enterprise III

Board Manual:
https://www.ultimateretro.net/motherboard/man … 5a798141710.pdf

Thread that seems to have my bios issue:
Replacing BIOS Chips

Reply 1 of 5, by Horun

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The BIOS chip should be the one with yellowish tag "6807...", if you peel that off you should have a chip number. The XGecu TL866 programmers work very well.
Make sure you buy a real XGecu ( xgecupro on ebay) and get the adapters ..
You will have to unsolder it to replace. Makes me wish all boards had socketed ROMs but many do not 🙁

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 2 of 5, by bstar

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Horun wrote on 2022-04-17, 14:51:

The BIOS chip should be the one with yellowish tag "6807...", if you peel that off you should have a chip number. The XGecu TL866 programmers work very well.
Make sure you buy a real XGecu ( xgecupro on ebay) and get the adapters ..
You will have to unsolder it to replace. Makes me wish all boards had socketed ROMs but many do not 🙁

Thanks! So something like this?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192899374231?_trkpar … %3ABFBMgOXFgIdg

Does that require Windows to load the ROM? I use linux so I need something that is OS agnostic.

So you think the square chip is the bios? I thought it was the chip next to the RTC.
Edit, you are correct. Happy I asked.

Reply 4 of 5, by Horun

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Yes those will work. The TL866ii does support N28F001BX-T @PLCC32 so you need the PLCC32 to DIP32 adapter, however the software only runs under Windows from XP thru Win10 AFAIK and it can run under Linux + Wine with one proper DLL.

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 5 of 5, by bstar

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Horun wrote on 2022-04-17, 15:57:

Yes those will work. The TL866ii does support N28F001BX-T @PLCC32 so you need the PLCC32 to DIP32 adapter, however the software only runs under Windows from XP thru Win10 AFAIK and it can run under Linux + Wine with one proper DLL.

Awesome. Thanks again.

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