Vynix wrote on 2023-11-16, 10:43:

Since your board tries to seek the floppy drive, there's some hope for recovery. […]
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Since your board tries to seek the floppy drive, there's some hope for recovery.

I've faced that with a very similar board (mine was a HOT-555A Rev-3.2), I tried to flash a patched BIOS, and wound up in the same boat.

I prepared a DOS boot disk with AWDFlash, the patched BIOS and a modified AUTOEXEC.BAT written to tell AWDFLASH to directly flash the patched BIOS without promoting anything, although this assumes you have access to another working PC with a floppy drive and have some spare floppy disks.

So with the floppy disk prepared, I turned off the bricked PC, put the floppy disk in it, then turned it back on, and after a few minutes, I heard the floppy drive seek back and forth, I let it sit for roughly an hour and a half just to be sure that it flashed the EEPROM, and after rebooting, it seemed to have recovered.

It's been a year and I still have no idea what went down.

That's how I "rescued" the second GA-K8VM800M and the replacement Asus K8V-MX for a brief moment. When the same symptom appeared on K8V-MX I realized that only a defective CPU or RAM could have done that before POST so I replaced the DIMM and tested it with MemTest86 on an unused, "expendable" system. Multiple error reports spun out immediately. 😠

DerBaum wrote on 2023-11-16, 12:18:

If you are in europe, i could burn a rom for you and send you over a free floppy drive... because i have like 50 😁

Thanks for proposing and for the advice on replacing the mobo only as last resort. I'll keep you posted.

mtest001 wrote on 2023-11-16, 10:55:

Thank you for the feedback. Indeed that's the procedure and I have prepared the floppy but unfortunately it did not work and I don't know why, and worst of all since there is no video I can't tell if Awdflash throws an error or what not. I waited 20 minutes but not 1.5 hour as you did 😀

[snip]

I don't remember exactly what kind of options I specified but on top of my head I recall putting something that had to do with erasing and reflashing the bootblock (it's been a while so I don't remember what options I specified), so to play it safe, I waited a long time as I had no idea how long it took.

But in these cases, an external programmer (something like the XGecu T48 or the older TL866ii+) would be the way to go, that or if you have a network card with a EEPROM socket, you can use Flashrom and use it as a (very limited) EEPROM flasher.

Vynix wrote on 2023-11-16, 19:04:

if you have a network card with a EEPROM socket, you can use Flashrom and use it as a (very limited) EEPROM flasher.

You picked my curiosity here... How does that work? Can you tell me more or give me a pointer? Thanks.

EDIT: Nevermind I found plenty of examples on the net, such as this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NRHMTGXd94
Thank you I learned something today!

I'm in Europe and would be able to flash the chip if you handle the shipping.

KungfuPancake wrote on 2023-11-16, 21:19:

I'm in Europe and would be able to flash the chip if you handle the shipping.

Very very nice from you for proposing, thank you.

If I reach a dead end with the normal BIOS recovery I'll contact you.

Hi, maybe I have a solution for you. We can try an automatic bios update one more time for your motherboard.

To make it work:
1. Copy / paste / overwrite ALL files from the zip to a windows 98 floppy boot disk.
2. Replace "BIOSNAME.BIN" file to your bios file you want to use (my files dont have a bios file)
3. Change "BIOSNAME.BIN" in autoexec.bat to your bios file name you put second before.

Additional info:
It's important to use this version of awdflash, it's older and more suitable for this m/b.
Very important to not mess with autoexec.bat parameters - this parameter included is needed to flash bios automatically ( no screen no keyboard) maybe this is why your update failed. Config.sys should be blank.

To sum up, you have to only put your bios file and set this file name in the autoexec after copy zip files to a windows 98 boot disk. Wait 20 minutes after boot. I hope it works

EDIT:
If you set this disk to this PC, never ever put it in another PC.

Thank you I'll try that. I still don't have access to a floppy drive as silly as this may sound... A few more days and I should be able to test.

I've tried and it updated automatically and bricked bios in my emulation machine (PCEM). That's a good sign. 😀

dragonkn wrote on 2023-11-17, 23:03:

Hi, maybe I have a solution for you. We can try an automatic bios update one more time for your motherboard.

THANK YOU so much Dragonkn, it worked !!

I have no idea what made the difference between your files and what I tried before, besides using a different version of AWDFLASH the only changes are 1.your command saves the old BIOS (which by the way did not work for some reasons) and 2.does a Clear Cmos...

Most likely it's your version of AWDFLASH that saved me.

If you pass by Geneva, Switerland one day please ping me and I'll buy you a ton of beers !!!

OK, now time to do my HDD upgrade which was the reason I needed to upgrade the BIOS in the first place.

When Awdflash crashed at the beginning , did it go back to DOS or did the PC go unstable?

I've seen a few times that the newer version of awdflash has problems with older motherboards. I had problems with SLOT1 m/b, and it crashed to DOS and I started the older version immediately with success.

I think it should be a common knowledge here that if we update bios, we should use the period correct version of awdflash.

Many thanks for inviting me to Geneva !!! I' will ping someday, I hope. 😀

Good luck with the HDD upgrade, this is a very good-looking retro machine.

When the incident happened awdflash simply froze. I just saw the message (I can't remember exactly the wording) saying that it was erasing the current BIOS image and then the progress bar showed up and it stopped there. I left the PC running for more than 40 minutes and nothing moved at all. At that time I was using awdflash 6.6, not so different from the 6.31 included in your zip.

While thinking about it maybe what made the difference was the Clear Cmos.

Ah, late to the party but as another suisse-romand if you ever need anything just hit me up 😉 got a TL866 and plenty of spare parts.

Thank you @Boohyaka , if needed I'll ping you.