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A few hours wasted on programming SP97-V BIOS

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First post, by lazibayer

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I obtained an SP97-V without VGA header and it came with older version BIOS (maybe 1.04?). I updated it to 0109v_j2 and it worked fine with PCI video card. Today the VGA header I ordered arrived but the onboard VGA gives no signal and the board refuses to boot. I thought I got a board with busted VGA and now it might be too late to return it. So I desperately reprogrammed with different versions of BIOS and nope! Aflash did all the flash jobs without any error message. Before I trash the board I saw someone saying aflash is the wrong utility and pflash is the right one to go. I tried pflash and voila the onboard VGA worked.
I am quite confused. If both tools are essentially doing the same job, i.e. putting the same content to the same location in the same BIOS chip, and both claimed to success, why would one work but not the other? I would like to see a more catastrophic failure if something went wrong during BIOS programming, but why does it only affect the onboard VGA?

Reply 2 of 8, by SquallStrife

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I know that some utilities do more than just write the bytes out to the flash chip. Some of them calculate checksums, or add preambles, stuff like that.

VogonsDrivers.com | Link | News Thread

Reply 3 of 8, by lazibayer

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I took off the BIOS chip, inserted it on a 3COM ethernet adapter, erased and programmed another BIOS file with flashrom. I would assume flashrom is a verbatim writer. The BIOS works fine with onboard VGA.

Reply 4 of 8, by PhilsComputerLab

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I've got an ASUS boad, ATX factor through, with SIS chip and graphics. I also couldn't get the header / graphics to work...

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Reply 5 of 8, by lazibayer

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philscomputerlab wrote:

I've got an ASUS boad, ATX factor through, with SIS chip and graphics. I also couldn't get the header / graphics to work...

Is it SPAX, SP97-XV, P5S or P99? Did you take care of the VGA-enable jumpers? Did you install the RAM at the first bank/row?

Reply 6 of 8, by PhilsComputerLab

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lazibayer wrote:
philscomputerlab wrote:

I've got an ASUS boad, ATX factor through, with SIS chip and graphics. I also couldn't get the header / graphics to work...

Is it SPAX, SP97-XV, P5S or P99? Did you take care of the VGA-enable jumpers? Did you install the RAM at the first bank/row?

I did a review a while ago: http://youtu.be/fXISjlgHM6I

Excellent board. Shows ALI and VIA how it's done 🤣

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Reply 7 of 8, by lazibayer

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philscomputerlab wrote:
lazibayer wrote:
philscomputerlab wrote:

I've got an ASUS boad, ATX factor through, with SIS chip and graphics. I also couldn't get the header / graphics to work...

Is it SPAX, SP97-XV, P5S or P99? Did you take care of the VGA-enable jumpers? Did you install the RAM at the first bank/row?

I did a review a while ago: http://youtu.be/fXISjlgHM6I

Excellent board. Shows ALI and VIA how it's done 🤣

Nice review!
Hope you can get the built-in VGA working. It's not quite useful due to the shared memory bus but I personally feel sad if part of my board doesn't work. Don't know if you feel the same way 🤣

Last edited by lazibayer on 2015-01-15, 02:36. Edited 1 time in total.
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