I've recently acquired this board in rev. 1.2. My intention is to use it with my AMD 5x86-P75.

The board came with BIOS revision 0203 - no 5x86 support, no PnP. Having destroyed 486 BIOSes before I was careful this time to find out exactly what sort of BIOS I had. After peeling back the Award label, it turned out to be an Intel P28F010 12v chip. I set JP32 and 33 accordingly.

I used flash.exe (an old version from Award) to flash the BIOS to version 0306, the latest version. There didn't seem to be any problem - POST was fine, 5x86 recognised with correct jumper setting, my AWE32 PnP also. Unfortunately I have been encountering the dreaded 'ERROR: Can't write ESCD' message since the flash. The board also suffers complete freezes at this point with no error message, usually on reboot or after I have made changes in the BIOS setup.

There were all kinds of interesting problems in Windows 95C, such as my Matrox Millennium II suffering resource conflicts - and after I changed the RAM timings in the BIOS from 'auto' settings to 2-1-1-1 Windows decided to redetect all of the hardware.

I tried reflashing the BIOS again with version 0306 with UniFlash and with Award's flash.exe, with no change. I tried using Asus' own aflash.exe, which failed to recognise the Intel chip, and had a similar experience with the newest awdfl882.exe. I have since discovered a further Asus utility called pflash.exe, dating from 1995-6. I tried to use this to retreat to version 0301, but it hangs during the 'blanking' phase. Fortunately it doesn't seem to do any damage. This particular version does have an 'erase ESCD' option though.

I have since used the original flash.exe to revert to the last non-PnP BIOS version, which is 0205, which was successful. I removed the 5x86 and have gone back to a simple Intel DX2-66 setup. I have found further documentation from Asus' .tw FTP relating to the first PnP BIOS, version 0301. My next move will be to attempt to flash the current version, 0205, to version 0301 using pflash.

I have read old threads on here where RG100 claimed to have fixed this problem, but using a 5v chip. I have also discovered this:

http://wiki.rom.by/index.php/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D1% … 0%B8%D0%B5:ASUS

Note the phrase 'PVI-486SP3 M/B only support SST PH29EE010 & Winbond W29EE01 +5V Flash EPROM for PnP BIOS' - really? Why?

Any suggestions??