VOGONS

Need assistance flashing bios ?

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First post, by Intel486dx33

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I am trying to update the bios in my Socket-3 motherboard so it will support AMD 5x86 CPU.
AMD 5x86@160mhz., Media Vision PAS16. ( Win 95 )
It’s working now but It has poor cache/memory performance.
The manual reads that I need a 12/12/1995 bios or newer to support this CPU.
My current bios is dated 1994.
I have the .ROM files I just need the flash utility.
I don’t have an eprom flash device so i will have to flash while eprom is still on motherboard.
I don’t know if the motherboard has a jumper setting to write-protect the eprom.
I have the manual but some jumpers settings are not listed in the manual I have.

Its a “PC Chips 918i” Motherboard with an American Mega trends bios.
Amibios.
Dated 11/2/94

I get this error message when I try to flash the bios while booting off a DOS 6.22 boot disk and then run the flash utility. the utility is called “Amiflash”
My rom file is “12345.rom” 😊

Command I use
# A:\amiflash 12345.rom

I picked up the flash utility here:
https://soggi.org/motherboards/bios-update-fl … h-utilities.htm

I get this error message:

Reply 1 of 3, by Deksor

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Your bios rom doesn't look like a EEPROM to me, you'd need UV light + something able to program these EPROMs. I don't think a computer motherboard can flash EPROMS (by opposition to EEPROMs). Also I am not sure if your 486 is actually capable of flashing ROMs at all. If it can't, at the very least you'd need another motherboard from the pentium/pentium2 era and do the hotswap flashing technique using uniflash.

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Reply 2 of 3, by treeman

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it would be much easier using a external programmer like a tl866 + uv erase light or buy empty writeable eproms

why don't u bench the cache performance first with a lower cpu that has full bios support

Reply 3 of 3, by Tiido

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Most 486 boards lack ability to update their BIOS, and in most cases you have an UV or OTP EPROM there anyway which cannot be updated on the motherboard even if you add a blank one. !WE line is not connected on most boards so even if you put a real NOR Flash in the socket you still cannot update it.

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