Hi,
I'm trying to get an ABIT KT7 board working. It currently turns on normally, i.e. it starts the fans when activating the power switch and it stops after holding the switch for a few seconds, but seems to not have any bios activity. Two different POST cards show just "--".

Having replaced bulged caps, checked voltages (all seem correct), and tested with multiple CPUs and RAM sticks, it's turn to flash the BIOS. And that is where I'm having issues 😀

This board has an Award bios which is flashed via AWDFLASH. I downloaded several versions of the bios, they all are a self-extracting EXE which extracts awdflash.exe, a bin file, and a couple of batch files which just invoke awdflash.exe. The bios which can be donwloaded from The Retro Web is just the BIN file, but that doesn't help. Maybe I just let myself go down the rabbit hole and missed a simple solution, but if not, I think I am at a dead end.

The BIN files are 256k, but I don't they are valid for flashing using an usb programmer. If I run hexdump on them, I get

1$ hexdump -C kt7_zt.bin | head -2
200000000  25 fd 2d 6c 68 35 2d 1f  48 01 00 00 00 02 00 00  |%.-lh5-.H.......|
300000010  00 00 50 20 01 0c 4b 54  37 5f 5a 54 2e 42 49 4e  |..P ..KT7_ZT.BIN|

So it seems to me they are compressed, but when I try to extract the compressed file it results in a 128k file. Which has some indication of being an actual bios file (having an "Award Decompression Bios" string and a few others that look like what one would see in BIOS menus), but is only 128k, and moreover it doesn't seem to be the only file in the BIN:

1hexdump -C KT7_A9.BIN | grep -A2 -- -lh5-
200000000  25 3b 2d 6c 68 35 2d b1  3a 01 00 00 00 02 00 00  |%;-lh5-.:.......|
300000010  00 00 50 20 01 0c 4b 54  37 5f 41 39 2e 42 49 4e  |..P ..KT7_A9.BIN|
400000020  00 20 06 71 20 00 00 2d  e0 8f 80 fd d5 a4 ad ee  |. .q ..-........|
5--
60001b8c0  2d 6c 68 35 2d 9a 0e 00  00 d9 25 00 00 00 00 03  |-lh5-.....%.....|
70001b8d0  40 20 01 0b 41 43 50 49  54 42 4c 2e 42 49 4e fa  |@ ..ACPITBL.BIN.|
80001b8e0  d2 20 00 00 0b be 7c 9a  ee b1 b6 db ff 7b dc 38  |. ....|......{.8|
9--
100001c780  a9 2d 6c 68 35 2d 03 02  00 00 42 06 00 00 00 00  |.-lh5-....B.....|
110001c790  02 40 20 01 0c 41 57 41  52 44 45 50 41 2e 42 49  |.@ ..AWARDEPA.BI|
120001c7a0  4e 88 96 20 00 00 01 b0  63 77 b1 b6 b9 5d c7 65  |N.. ....cw...].e|
13--
140001e890  fc ca 9b 95 06 5a 40 00  25 44 2d 6c 68 35 2d 23  |.....Z@.%D-lh5-#|
150001e8a0  12 00 00 40 25 00 00 00  00 29 40 20 01 0c 5f 45  |...@%....)@ .._E|
160001e8b0  4e 5f 43 4f 44 45 2e 42  49 4e 42 dc 20 00 00 0d  |N_CODE.BINB. ...|
17--
180001fae0  e6 b8 00 23 5c 2d 6c 68  35 2d 9e 6f 00 00 00 e0  |...#\-lh5-.o....|
190001faf0  00 00 00 00 86 40 20 01  0a 56 31 31 31 30 34 2e  |.....@ ..V11104.|
200001fb00  42 49 4e 22 85 20 00 00  29 a0 8e ef 5e 1d 9b 49  |BIN". ..)...^..I|

So, after seeing this I am thinking AWDFLASH.EXE doesn't just copy the original BIN, but instead takes those files and does who knows what with each. 7zip and similar programs do not seem to know about the additional files, so I'd have to extract them using a custom script, but even if I can get them, how would I know which order is awdflash putting them in the eeprom (or even if it uses all of them)?

With the board not working, I can't use awdflash, so the question is: Is there any way to have awdflash create the correct file to use in an usb programmer? Or is there any actual, usable BIN for this board anywhere? Did I just confuse myself and I'm missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance!