A good picture of the motherboard might help ! Could it be this board: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ford-lian-bx-6vp2
check the BX-6VP2 User Manual rev D (English) as it says VIA 82c596 for southbridge...and Winbond 83977 I/O
and here: https://www.elhvb.com/mboards/fordlian/Garner.html shows 693V22F.BIN (08/18/99 V2.2 2M PENTIUM III CPU, Y2K SUPPORT ULTRA DMA66)
hex internal: Award 08/18/1999-693-596-W977-2A6LGF9AC-00
and on WIMS bios Award page lists 2A6LG for Via Apollo Pro Plus (692/596) chipset...... the RetroWeb has a newer bios v2.9

Here's what I found now. Actually there's another identical or very similar mobo from Polaris with VIA Apollo Pro chipset and its model is BV-6AP2 (but mine is marked as BX-6AP2 and it has VT82C596 south bridge chip from VIA). Maybe I have to find BIOS for this BV-model and try it.

Pictures... maybe tomorrow.

Update: This board looks same/very similar, but its IO controller is slightly different - Winbond W83877. On mine BX-marked board it's Winbond W83977. I don't know if BIOS for this BV-6AP2 mobo will work with mine BX-6AP2, but seems that I'm out of choices.

analog_programmer wrote on 2023-10-21, 18:40:

Here's what I found now. Actually there's another identical or very similar mobo from Polaris with VIA Apollo Pro chipset and its model is BV-6AP2 (but mine is marked as BX-6AP2 and it has VT82C596 south bridge chip from VIA). Maybe I have to find BIOS for this BV-model and try it.

Pictures... maybe tomorrow.

Update: This board looks same/very similar, but its IO controller is slightly different - Winbond W83877. On mine BX-marked board it's Winbond W83977. I don't know if BIOS for this BV-6AP2 mobo will work with mine BX-6AP2, but seems that I'm out of choices.

No that will not because the bios is for a ViA 691 + 586B chipset, you said yours has a 596 which was used with VIA 692, not 691 AFAIK

I don't know for sure what is the north bridge of my mobo, since it's with factory glued heatsink and I only see markings on the south bridge chip. If this BV-6AP2 BIOS don't POST, then the board goes for spare parts, which is sad as it's one of the two slot 1 boards that I have now and the second is from IBM machine with very limited options.

Ok, just tried the BIOS for BV-6AP2 with Apollo Pro chipset and the result is same as with the other BIOSes from internet for BX-6AP2 board (I think they're all for intel440xx chipsets versions of the board) - no POST screen; POST-test card shows "--,--" (with some BX-6AP2 BIOSes it shows "06,--"); fan for the CPU spins. That's it.

Obviously the BIOS for this wicked BX-6AP2 board (Apollo Pro version) is lost forever ant the mobo will be used as donor for spare parts.

I would still try the BX-6VP2 bios as it is for VIA chipset, yep if the bios string has 440BX in it then for Intel chipset not VIA 😀

Horun wrote on 2023-10-21, 20:05:

I would still try the BX-6VP2 bios as it is for VIA chipset, yep if the bios string has 440BX in it then for Intel chipset not VIA 😀

I saw that there's also Polaris BX-6VP2 model with VIA chipset, but don't know how much differs from my board as the formfactor and topology are totally different. I'll try this tomorrow as it's already almost midnight here.

Also, tomorrow I'll make some pictures of my ill-fated Polaris BX-6AP2 VIA chipset board and will post them here as last hope, if some good guy with exactly the same board make for me a dump of his board's BIOS. I doubt this will going to happen, but I have to try it 'cause I'm running out of other options.

Anyway, thanks for your comments.

Update: Added pictures for this messed-up-chipset motherboard in the first post.

Gonna try with Polaris BX-6VP2 BIOS as there's no more options for now.

The result with BX-6VP2 BIOS:

Now I believe the original BIOS for this by design messed-up motherboard model is unrecoverable, hence no hope for resurrecting it. Once again I was convinced that that stupid cliche "what's once out on the internet it stays out forever" really is complete nonsense. The easiest way to erase or manipulate something is when you don't physically own it (or own it on a local physical media).

analog_programmer wrote on 2023-10-22, 10:20:

Now I believe the original BIOS for this by design messed-up motherboard model is unrecoverable, hence no hope for resurrecting it. Once again I was convinced that that stupid cliche "what's once out on the internet it stays out forever" really is complete nonsense. The easiest way to erase or manipulate something is when you don't physically own it (or own it on a local physical media).

Yeah, I can feel your frustration with this BX-6AP2 board.
The confusion comes from the VIA 82C692BX northbridge. VIA made this chipset to be pin compatible with Intel’s 440BX so motherboard designers could use the VIA or Intel chip on the same board. Hence the ‘BX’ in the board’s name. 😉
I believe this 692BX to be a BX pin-out rework of the 691 Apollo Pro northbridge and I’ve seen the 692BX sometimes named as “Apollo Pro II” or “VIA BX”.

The VIA 692BX comes with the VT82C596 southbridge and I’m convinced that a VIA 692BX is hiding under your glued-on heatsink.

So you have to look for an Award BIOS with an xx/xx/xxxx-692-596-W977-2A6LGxxxC-00 ID-string.
Look at https://theretroweb.com/chipsets/502 and check-out the lists under both “See all boards with this chipset” and “See all BIOSes for this chipset” buttons.
You can narrow down the search by looking for a VIA 692/596-Winbond 977(TF) board with a similar lay-out for AGP/PCI and RAM slots.
I’m sure there is a BIOS on TheRetroWeb that works on your board.

Happy hunting!
Jan

Chkcpu wrote on 2023-10-22, 15:09:

Yeah, I can feel your frustration with this BX-6AP2 board. The confusion comes from the VIA 82C692BX northbridge. VIA made this […]
Show full quote

Yeah, I can feel your frustration with this BX-6AP2 board.
The confusion comes from the VIA 82C692BX northbridge. VIA made this chipset to be pin compatible with Intel’s 440BX so motherboard designers could use the VIA or Intel chip on the same board. Hence the ‘BX’ in the board’s name. 😉
I believe this 692BX to be a BX pin-out rework of the 691 Apollo Pro northbridge and I’ve seen the 692BX sometimes named as “Apollo Pro II” or “VIA BX”.

The VIA 692BX comes with the VT82C596 southbridge and I’m convinced that a VIA 692BX is hiding under your glued-on heatsink.

So you have to look for an Award BIOS with an xx/xx/xxxx-692-596-W977-2A6LGxxxC-00 ID-string.
Look at https://theretroweb.com/chipsets/502 and check-out the lists under both “See all boards with this chipset” and “See all BIOSes for this chipset” buttons.
You can narrow down the search by looking for a VIA 692/596-Winbond 977(TF) board with a similar lay-out for AGP/PCI and RAM slots.
I’m sure there is a BIOS on TheRetroWeb that works on your board.

Happy hunting!
Jan

Mr. Steunebrink, thank you very much for this info about this VIA chipset! I didn't know that it's "Apollo Pro II" under the heatsink of this mobo due to user's manual description. But now it's clear to me why there's more widespread variant of exactly the same board with Intel 440xx chipset.

And you're absolutely right about potential working BIOS candidates on theretroweb site search results. I've to try some of them, but it will happen another day.

It would be wonderful if someone fellow forum member has the same board as mine and share the original BIOS, but thanks for giving me back some hope of getting this mobo up and running again, albeit with "foreign" BIOS 😀

All the best!

Update: Didn't resist to try some potential working BIOS from the retroweb's list, but so far, no good.

Tried Totem TM-P3VAAT BIOS as this mobo seems close to my dead BX-6AP2 VIA board (found BIOS dump on another site) with same I/O chip, same south bridge chip, same count for SD-RAM, PCI and ISA slotst. Results: no POST screen, again "C0,--" POST-code lock, no luck.

Yeah I looked into the P3VAAT and it's BIOS string actually points to VIA 693/596B <not 692/596> "Award 11/22/2000-693-596B-977-2A6LGTJNC-00"
similar to BX-6VP2 bios which proves the Northbridge is not VIA 693 just by two diff tests or else it might hang somewhere else imho.
I think Jan is correct it must be a 692/596 + W977 only bios.
Try this one: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/shuttl … t-661v-v1.x-2.x even though the picture shows an ITE I/O chip the bios stamp is correct for 692/596+ W 977 I/O.
Suggest you try an older BIOS first as the newer ones may be more tweaked to the exact board....
ADded: It also has jumpers to set FSB and multiplier like your board jumpers and switches, we need to look close (which you did) because if has no jumpers/switches as your board layout, itwould interfere with the "auto detection" speed set by BIOS stuff... just a thought.

added2: If you look at the page Jan linked you will see that even with a great TRW crew and Vogons members only 8 of the 25 boards listed with similar chipset have actual motherboard pictures, shows the rareity of those boards at this time.
So the odds of someone else having one is a very long shot (think lottery odds 🤣)

Horun, I appreciate your participation in the thread 'cause you're the only one who's actively trying to help me with some ideas and guidance. Thank you!

Horun wrote on 2023-10-23, 00:59:

Yeah I looked into the P3VAAT and it's BIOS string actually points to VIA 693/596B <not 692/596> "Award 11/22/2000-693-596B-977-2A6LGTJNC-00"
similar to BX-6VP2 bios which proves the Northbridge is not VIA 693 just by two diff tests or else it might hang somewhere else imho.
I think Jan is correct it must be a 692/596 + W977 only bios.

I saw that through MODBIN, but I've to try it 'cause also on theretroweb I saw that for some motherboards with newer BIOS versions this string changes from 692 to 693 (like this one, but maybe those BIOSess are for different board revisions since the sizes of dump-files differ) and the only board that's closest to mine as for its topology and components was this one. Sadly it didn't work.

I'm still confused by what is potentially hiding under the glued north bridge heatsink and I'm thinking about removing it with dental floss method. I thought it could be VT82C693A (133MHz FSB support) as by the information in the user's manual this mobo supports jumper combinations for FSB up to 150MHz, but now I'm pretty sure that I can't rely on any info from the manual as it's "universal" for both intel and VIA chipset variants.

Horun wrote on 2023-10-23, 00:59:

Try this one: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/shuttl … t-661v-v1.x-2.x even though the picture shows an ITE I/O chip the bios stamp is correct for 692/596+ W 977 I/O.
Suggest you try an older BIOS first as the newer ones may be more tweaked to the exact board....
ADded: It also has jumpers to set FSB and multiplier like your board jumpers and switches, we need to look close (which you did) because if has no jumpers/switches as your board layout, itwould interfere with the "auto detection" speed set by BIOS stuff... just a thought.

I'll try it, but this one has four RAM slots, three ISA and four PCI slots which maybe will be potential problem. I've never edited PCI-tables with MODBIN or AMIBCP tools. My broken board is not bad for overclocking and I like and prefer this oldfashioned hardware way with jumpers and switches, but this also could be a problem as it differs with Shuttle's mobo. Shuttle's picture also shows intel south bridge 😁

Horun wrote on 2023-10-23, 00:59:

added2: If you look at the page Jan linked you will see that even with a great TRW crew and Vogons members only 8 of the 25 boards listed with similar chipset have actual motherboard pictures, shows the rareity of those boards at this time.
So the odds of someone else having one is a very long shot (think lottery odds 🤣)

Yeah, you just beat me (I've actually think for a while that it's pointless 😀 ) to publish Totem TM-P3VAAT 's BIOS in the thread for theretroweb's updates, but it seems to me that the guy who used to update theretroweb site through the thread here looks like he abandoned that job some time ago. Months ago I posted some better resolution pics there and nothing has been updated on the site. So, I'll not bother to make and publish some nice pics of my ill-fated board in the thread before scrapping it since nobody cares to update theretroweb database from here anymore.

Honestly, I don't expect someone to make and put here BIOS dump (for free) even if he is in possession of exactly the same BX-6AP2 VIA chipset mobo. This is kinda waste of time related with having to run a PII/Celeron system or removing the chip from the socket and looking for a programmer to read it.

P.S. I've already tried about ten different BIOS-dump files downloaded from different internet resources with no success and I think I'll start filling a list here so I don't repeat tryouts unnecessarily. Plus in this section of the forum users generate an awful lot of spam with videocards, soundcards, system configurations and software/OS topics that could easily be in the appropriate sections, but nobody cares, and thus displacing the other topics faster, not to mention the topics like "how to unsubscribe form this forum?" or "what if somewhere in the universe someone starts manufacturing brand new old hardware parts" 😁

At last some minor progress, but sill no go.

Now I tried two BIOSes. For Shuttle HOT-661V V1.x/2.x and for Soyo SY-V6BE+ and for the first time I saw some changing POST-codes on the POST-diagnostic card. I think this confirms VIA VT82C692(BX)/VT82C596 chipset combo.

With Shuttle HOT-661V V1.x/2.x's BIOS POSTs codes are "00", "c0", "c1", "0c", "03" and "05" (maybe missing one or two as they change fast) and boot process halts.

With Soyo SY-V6BE+'s BIOS codes are same or very similar, but when it reaches "05" just keeps on restarting in endless loop.

I think this is due to incompatible keyboard controller and I do not know which chip it is. Since I don't know if it's possible to transplant parts of BIOS init-module code from one dump-file to another, I think that there is no more hope for this board to "lives" ever again.

Many thanks to Horun and Jan Steunebrink for their help!

P.S. There're two more potential candidates for BIOS donors (BCM QS440VA and Lucky Star 6VABX2 1.1/1.2), but I don't think they'll be compatible either. The other VIA VT82C692(BX) chipset mobos on theretroweb site have integrated audio (and video) chips.

So, no luck with BCM QS440VA BIOS. POST-code was regular "C0,--" with hang. But...

Chkcpu wrote on 2023-10-22, 15:09:

I’m sure there is a BIOS on TheRetroWeb that works on your board.

You were right, Mr. Steunebrink! Literally the last BIOS that I tried (with no hope for success) revived the mobo:

I got lucky with Lucky Star 6VABX2 1.1/1.2 BIOS (6VABX2-C0 version works, #LGAx-0x versions doesn't boot at all) and, yes, "it lives again"... or at least at some extend 😀

There're still a couple of problems with this BIOS. For example disk detection's not working properly at first boot after cleared CMOS and perfectly healthy 1.44MB FD-drive refuses to read diskettes at all. Maybe I've to try to use contact cleaner on HDD and FDD headers as they seems to be clean, but this board was not been used since catastrophic BIOS "update" around year 2008. So, I guess these are more of a hardware related problems. Or maybe revision of Winbond I/O controller differs and this also matters.

Anyway, I'll use MODBIN to remove/add un/necessary options in the 6VABX2 BIOS to adapt it for BX-6AP2 as much as possible. I hope there will be no serious problems due to different count of PCI slots (5 for 6VABX2 vs 3 for BX-6AP2). BIOS PATCHER 6.00 will be of use too.

I'm still searching for original BIOS for VIA chipset...

Great ! Yeah I do not think support for more PCI slots in bios (more ISA definately not) will be an issue, no different than having board with 5 slots and only using 2, the other 3 will be scanned and find nothing/found empty.
In your case it will scan "empty slots". Only down side is in BIOS it may allow manual setting IRQs to PCI 4 and 5 but that won't effect anything except taking up those IRQ's as in use.....
Is worse if you use a 3 PCI only bios on a 4 PCI board, the bios may not scan that 4th slot making it unusable/unsettable IIRC.
Good work and glad you finally found one ! When you do some MODBIN see i you can change the "6VABX2-CO" to "BX-6AP2-BETA" or similar 😁

Yeah, I'm very happy to see again this almost thrown in the trash-bin board alive and running even with some minor problems. I even managed to try my unlocked (for lower multipliers) PII 266 Klamath at 3 x 100 MHz FSB. Also Celeron 333 Mendocino runs fine, so at least it is now usable as slot 1 test-motherboard 😁

Now I've to try to solve the floppy disk read problem if it's hardware related. And I absolutely have to change the 32-pin BIOS chip socket as it is now somehow loose after so many removals and inserts of BIOS chips and to make a good contact to all of the pins it is now a bit tricky job.

Horun wrote on 2023-10-24, 01:29:

Great ! Yeah I do not think support for more PCI slots in bios (more ISA definately not) will be an issue, no different than having board with 5 slots and only using 2, the other 3 will be scanned and find nothing/found empty.
In your case it will scan "empty slots". Only down side is in BIOS it may allow manual setting IRQs to PCI 4 and 5 but that won't effect anything except taking up those IRQ's as in use.....
Is worse if you use a 3 PCI only bios on a 4 PCI board, the bios may not scan that 4th slot making it unusable/unsettable IIRC.

When I thought about this, it seems perfectly logical. Thanks for the clarification!

I think there'll be no need to mess with PCI/ISA slot IRQ settings as the menu in BIOS looks like in the BX-6AP2 manual:

One potential missing item is for "low level HDD format", but it's not a problem. And I've to remove timing setting for third RAM slot as the board lacks this one, but this is also minor problem. There're some missing setting for IR-port (I hope that they're just hidden) and useless soft o'c settings menu (checked that - jumper setting always overrides BIOS settings and it's missing in the manual for BX-6AP2) which I'll disable with MODBIN.

Horun wrote on 2023-10-24, 01:29:

Good work and glad you finally found one ! When you do some MODBIN see i you can change the "6VABX2-CO" to "BX-6AP2-BETA" or similar 😁

"BX-6AP2-BETA" lebel for BIOS version in the POST screen seems good idea, I thought about something like "BX-6AP2 with 6VABX2-C0 BIOS". And why not "BX-6AP2-VE" - VE for vogon's edition 😉

Hi analog_programmer,

I’m very pleased to hear you got the BX-6AP2 board running again! 😀

Horun wrote on 2023-10-24, 01:29:

Great ! Yeah I do not think support for more PCI slots in bios (more ISA definately not) will be an issue, no different than having board with 5 slots and only using 2, the other 3 will be scanned and find nothing/found empty.
In your case it will scan "empty slots". Only down side is in BIOS it may allow manual setting IRQs to PCI 4 and 5 but that won't effect anything except taking up those IRQ's as in use.....
Is worse if you use a 3 PCI only bios on a 4 PCI board, the bios may not scan that 4th slot making it unusable/unsettable IIRC.

I fully agree with Horun’s view on using the 5 PCI-slots BIOS on your 3 PCI-slots board.
However, with the Lucky Star 6VABX2 1.1/1.2 BIOS you may run into a snag when using the 3rd PCI-slot.

When you look into the i440BX BIOS for the Intel chipset version of your BX-6AP2 board with Modbin, you will see the following PCI Configuration:

Although the BX-6AP2 has 3 PCI-slots, there are 5 entries in this table. The first entry for PCI-slot 00/Device nbr 01 is the PCI Bus master in the Northbridge and the second entry for PCI-slot 01/Device nbr 07 is for the PCI device in the Southbridge (IDE controller and USB controller).
Reading the remaining 3 table entries you get the Device numbers of the PCI-extension slots: 9 (09), 11 (0B), and 13 (OD). The programming of these PCI Device numbers in the BIOS must coincide with the actual hardware wiring of the address lines between the PCI-slots and the Northbridge on your board, otherwise the whole PnP function won’t work for that PCI-slot.

Now let’s assume the PCI-slots address wiring is the same on the VIA chipset version of the BX-6AP2 and when I look into the Lucky star 6VABX2C0 BIOS, I see this:

For this 5 PCI-slot BIOS there are now 7 table entries, the first 2 again for the North- and Southbridge and the remaining 5 for the PCI Extension slots.
The device numbers for the extension slots are 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 in this BIOS. Device numbers 9 and 11 are present, but 13 is not. So it is possible the 3rd PCI-slot on the BX-6AP2 won’t work with this Lucky star BIOS.

You can easily test this by putting a PCI-card like a NIC in PCI-slot 1 and check the PCI device listing on the second BIOS boot screen for detection of the card. Also device number 9, 11, or 13 should be assigned to the card and an IRQ number as well.
Then repeat this test with the card in slot 2 and slot 3.

Unfortunately the PCI device programming cannot be changed in Modbin.
I hope the original VIA BX-6AP2 BIOS will be found one day… 😉

Cheers, Jan

Chkcpu wrote on 2023-10-25, 20:33:

Hi analog_programmer, […]
Show full quote

Hi analog_programmer,

I’m very pleased to hear you got the BX-6AP2 board running again! 😀

Horun wrote on 2023-10-24, 01:29:

Great ! Yeah I do not think support for more PCI slots in bios (more ISA definately not) will be an issue, no different than having board with 5 slots and only using 2, the other 3 will be scanned and find nothing/found empty.
In your case it will scan "empty slots". Only down side is in BIOS it may allow manual setting IRQs to PCI 4 and 5 but that won't effect anything except taking up those IRQ's as in use.....
Is worse if you use a 3 PCI only bios on a 4 PCI board, the bios may not scan that 4th slot making it unusable/unsettable IIRC.

I fully agree with Horun’s view on using the 5 PCI-slots BIOS on your 3 PCI-slots board.
However, with the Lucky Star 6VABX2 1.1/1.2 BIOS you may run into a snag when using the 3rd PCI-slot.

When you look into the i440BX BIOS for the Intel chipset version of your BX-6AP2 board with Modbin, you will see the following PCI Configuration:

BX-6AP2_PCI-slots.png

Although the BX-6AP2 has 3 PCI-slots, there are 5 entries in this table. The first entry for PCI-slot 00/Device nbr 01 is the PCI Bus master in the Northbridge and the second entry for PCI-slot 01/Device nbr 07 is for the PCI device in the Southbridge (IDE controller and USB controller).
Reading the remaining 3 table entries you get the Device numbers of the PCI-extension slots: 9 (09), 11 (0B), and 13 (OD). The programming of these PCI Device numbers in the BIOS must coincide with the actual hardware wiring of the address lines between the PCI-slots and the Northbridge on your board, otherwise the whole PnP function won’t work for that PCI-slot.

Now let’s assume the PCI-slots address wiring is the same on the VIA chipset version of the BX-6AP2 and when I look into the Lucky star 6VABX2C0 BIOS, I see this:

6VABX2-PCI-slots.png

For this 5 PCI-slot BIOS there are now 7 table entries, the first 2 again for the North- and Southbridge and the remaining 5 for the PCI Extension slots.
The device numbers for the extension slots are 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 in this BIOS. Device numbers 9 and 11 are present, but 13 is not. So it is possible the 3rd PCI-slot on the BX-6AP2 won’t work with this Lucky star BIOS.

You can easily test this by putting a PCI-card like a NIC in PCI-slot 1 and check the PCI device listing on the second BIOS boot screen for detection of the card. Also device number 9, 11, or 13 should be assigned to the card and an IRQ number as well.
Then repeat this test with the card in slot 2 and slot 3.

Unfortunately the PCI device programming cannot be changed in Modbin.
I hope the original VIA BX-6AP2 BIOS will be found one day… 😉

Cheers, Jan

Thank you very much for your investigation in these differences, Jan. This is one good point. I appreciate the help you gave me together with the other fellow forum member - Horun.

I've only checked physically the first PCI slot with videocard and it receives IRQ according to settings in transplanted BIOS. So, I have to check the other two slots, but I'm pretty sure now, that third one will not work as expected with PnP cards.

And yes, this version of MODBIN for older Awars BIOSes can't change PCI table settings:

Yesterday I've created some custom BIOS from 6VABX2's and tested it. Here are the results:

On the second picture there is something that bothers me. I marked it in red rectangle. Why this "APCI controller" has IRQ assigned without bus number?

I'm thinking of editing the settings for the keyboard controller on the BIOSes (from Shuttle HOT-661V V1.x/2.x and for Soyo SY-V6BE+) that are blocking normal POST process because of a potential error related to its initialization, but possibly they'll have more appropriate settings for the PCI table. I've never tried this, so I don't know if it will help, but there's absolutely no problem to test it. This is from 6VABX2 BIOS:

P.S. Problems with HDD detection were due to loose BIOS chip socket connections. FDD no read problem -I've no time for deeper investigation now as I don't need to use FD drive with this mobo right now.

Update: Just tried all three PCI slots with PnP 3Com NIC adapter. Yeah, there's no way to assign IRQ when is used the third PCI slot (no problems with first and second slot), so now I can 100% confirm Jan's assumption about partially working third PCI slot.

I'm thinking to try again the rejected partially POSTing BIOSes with edited keyboard adapter type setting through MODBIN. A good task for this weekend.