VOGONS


First post, by BreakPoint

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Found this nice board but unfortunately BIOS chip missing.
Does anyone have this BIOS of know where to find it.

My CPU collection - Looking for hardware in Ukraine - Ukraine vintage PC forum

Reply 2 of 25, by Anonymous Coward

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: D thanks

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 3 of 25, by BreakPoint

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nemail wrote:

i'll try to get the image in the next few days...

would be nice - thanks

My CPU collection - Looking for hardware in Ukraine - Ukraine vintage PC forum

Reply 4 of 25, by nemail

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Hi

here's the BIOS, I hope I extracted it the right way. I used this guide:
http://www.mess.org/dumping/dump_bios_using_debug

Attachments

  • Filename
    FINAL.txt
    File size
    64 KiB
    Downloads
    99 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 5 of 25, by Anonymous Coward

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This BIOS recognises 4MB density SIMMs. Double plus good.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 6 of 25, by BreakPoint

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

This BIOS recognises 4MB density SIMMs. Double plus good.

Hi Anonymous Coward
Have you tried this BIOS? Did it work?
I failed 8 times with different EPROMs.

My CPU collection - Looking for hardware in Ukraine - Ukraine vintage PC forum

Reply 7 of 25, by Anonymous Coward

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I don't actually have an Asus 386C. I have a very similar board that has an older BIOS that I was trying to upgrade, but unfortunately it didn't work as my chipset revision is too old. I was able to determine support for 4MB SIMMs by examining the BIOS in a hex editor.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 8 of 25, by SteliosG

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So , do we have the BIOS available ?
Bios date is 5/5/91
The one uploaded in this thread doesn't work .

PS . I just corrupted mine . I wanted to extract the bios and upload it here but something went terribly wrong . 🙁

Reply 10 of 25, by Anonymous Coward

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SteliosG wrote:

The one uploaded in this thread doesn't work .

Why do you think that is? Corruption? On visual inspection I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 12 of 25, by SteliosG

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My board was working till I removed the EPROM in order to read it with my programmer . It's sad , because I wanted to upload it and share it here in the forums , but in the process I managed to destroy a fully working BIOS . As a result , my EPROM doesn't boot .

Thank you jesolo for the link ! Unfortunately , I didn't know about the NSSI tools .

Till now , I only managed to find a different bios from a similar board (sis rabbit chipset) and I programmed it to an EEPROM . My board boots but it's stuck on slow mode (no cache activated) . The turbo jumper and the BIOS settings regarding the turbo & cache doesn't make any difference .

So , nemail … can you please try to extract the bios with the NSSI tool ? The "Final.txt" doesn't boot .

Thanks in advance . 😀

Reply 13 of 25, by Anonymous Coward

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I've never heard of an EPROM being damaged simply by removing it, unless you phsyically break the chip or the glass window has been exposed to UV.
They're not particularly sensitive to static either. I've had EPROMs sit outside for years that are still readable. If it suddenly died, it must have been a defective chip.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 14 of 25, by SteliosG

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When I removed the EPROM from my board , I peeled the sticker to check the code and make sure that the setting on my programmers are OK . It was a 27C512 . There is a second sticker underneath to protect the UV part which I didn't touch at all.
So , I read it on the programmer and saved the file . Just to be sure I tried a verify to compare the data on the chip with the data in the saved file . Strangely I started getting verify errors . There was a pattern and every XXXX bits there was an error .
I removed the EPROM and put it on my board and it was no longer booting .
My programmer was at the right mode because during these days I program a lot of 27E512 for my other old boards .

I still can't understand what went wrong as it's the first time in my long life that I destroy/corrupt an EPROM .

The most frustrating issue is that I can't find a bios that can enable the turbo mode (cache enabled) . The LED stays off whatever I tried (Jumpered switch and "enable" in bios) . So far a found 2 bioses that work only in slow mode .

So , Anonymous Coward … are you still looking for a BIOS ? I was going to extract the BIOS and upload it here for you and now I'm also looking for a working BIOS 🙁

Reply 15 of 25, by Predator99

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SteliosG wrote:

So , I read it on the programmer and saved the file . Just to be sure I tried a verify to compare the data on the chip with the data in the saved file . Strangely I started getting verify errors . There was a pattern and every XXXX bits there was an error .

I also had this behaviour with an EPROM: I repeated the reading many times without break. I watched the checksum displayed (in case you have a TL866). After the checksum displayed a constant value 2 or more times, I saved the image.
I repeated this procedure several times and compared the images I got with FC /B. There were not to many different bits in. The missing ones I got with watching excactly these bits in the TL866 windows during repeated readings...

You should also try to clean the contacts. In the TL866 you can play with the volatges, maybe also an option as last chance...

Reply 16 of 25, by SteliosG

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I have an old LPT programmer . I tried reading it with a bit higher voltage (up to 6.3v from 5v) and I managed to read some more bits correctly , but no luck . The dump still has wrong bits …

Reply 17 of 25, by SteliosG

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Here's some good news ! 😀
I have managed to repair my corrupted BIOS dump with the help of the dump that nemail had uploaded here . I'll explain the method tomorrow . It was an easy fix .
Everything works properly , turbo , cache … etc etc . It's 100000% correct ... and I'm happy !:)

I'll upload tomorrow the BIOS together with another one from another board I have .

Reply 18 of 25, by SteliosG

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Bios uploaded : Re: 80386 BIOS image collection

I'm sure it will help some people ! 😀

So , regarding the repair process here's what happened …

I noticed there was a pattern in the errors on my corrupted EPROM . Only bytes at addresses ending with 4 were bad and were giving verify errors . For example :

0000DED4
0000DF14
0000DF54
0000DF94
0000DFD4
0000E414
0000EF94
0000EFD4
0000F414
0000F454
0000F494
0000F4D4
0000F514

Overall there were something like 150 bad bytes .

So , I compared nemail's dump with my corrupted dump and noticed that the files were extremely similar !
I also knew that any difference at an address ending with "4" would be most probably cause of my bad EPROM .
Luckily , there were a few more bytes with differences (around 10 places) but they weren't in addresses ending with "4" ! That was a relief! 😁
So all I've done was to change these 10 bytes in nemail's dump with the correct bytes from my dump .

Afterwards I programmed an W27C512 and board booted at full speed ! 😀

Reply 19 of 25, by Anonymous Coward

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I will dig out my SiS rabbit board to try this latest dump, but I'm not optimistic.

*edit* Nope, it still doesn't work. The last 3 codes on my post card are 15, 20 then 00.

This is a weird board. The only 386 board I've tried that won't accept a different BIOS or post with a DLC installed.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium