Well I dont know if the bios chip is soldered on motherboard, if it isn'tsoldered you could buy one of those bios flasher and try to download the bios file and write to the chip.
PhilsComputerLab did one awesome video showing the process
http://youtu.be/b_dEcShoR5Y

Well I can buy a preflashed bios chip for 11, or a flasher for 50, or a replacement board for 70.

candle_86 wrote:

Well I can buy a preflashed bios chip for 11, or a flasher for 50, or a replacement board for 70.

If you think that will be a recurring problem(maybe on another board) on a long term might be better buy a flasher.
But i dont see a good deal buy a replacement board just because the bios flashing process went wrong.
But you choose how to proceed.

If you can't get an EPROM programmer, a flasher or a replacement BIOS, there's another possibility.
It's not recommend and a bit tricky, though. I think its called "BIOS hot swap".
The idea is that you can use another mainboard to flash your chip.
If you have Shadow RAM enabled and/or "cacheable BIOS" enabled, it's possible to remove the mainboard's chip after DOS has loaded.
Then you can insert the broken chip and run the flash utility and program it (maybe it will complain).
After the program is done, it will reboot or quit to DOS.
If it reboots, your PC will hang (because the BIOS doesn't fit your mainboard). Power it off. Remove the flashed chip and put the original BIOS chip back.
I've done that maybe one time, can't remember anymore.
Again, it's not recommend! Its only meant as a last resort. You do that on your own risk.

I've done a BIOS hot flash a few years back. It worked great and got a super socket 7 board up and running again.

But after that experience I got an external flasher 🤣

well i just so happen to have a board i dont care about i could do that with. let me see if the bios chips are the same

candle_86 wrote:

well i just so happen to have a board i dont care about i could do that with. let me see if the bios chips are the same

I used to do this a lot. Most BIOS flash chips have a compatible pinout, though it's always safest to look them up and make sure. If it's a PLCC then you have to be careful about the voltage, some are 3.3v and some are 5v. Every DIP I've seen has been 5v. I would guess an Athlon64 is a 3.3v PLCC.
Leave the bootable flash chip loose in the socket so it barely makes enough contact to work, that way it's easier to pop out safely.
If it's a PLCC, put something non-conductive under it to pull with, like a thin plastic zip tie or a strong piece of string. On the chip you're going to install, I think I used to hold it from above with a looped piece of tape so that I could lower it into position more accurately without arcing the wrong pins. Whatever procedure you decide to use, practice with the power off before doing it for real.

I had a board that had a cracked PLCC socket which still worked. This made it easier to use for hotflashing because it was easier to get the chips in and out. I suppose the damage also made it easier to stick objects under the chip, so maybe that method doesn't work as well with an unbroken socket.
A board with dual BIOS chips (at least one socketed) would be ideal. I've never messed with those but I assume you must be able to boot from one while flashing the other, otherwise I don't know what the point of that feature would be. It would be a shame to accidentally flash the wrong chip though.

I'm going to for buy a replacement bios and plcc extractor and see what happens

Haven't done it yet but I will need to in the next few days: using the ROM socket on an Ethernet card to flash a system BIOS. It's a fairly well documented process.

There are quite a few people here that will also flash the chip for you. I know I've done it for a few local people and the programmer has paid for itself! I don't charge money, but I "suggest" they bring by a cold 6-pack. it's fun to network with other people working on older systems.

Well if anyone is in DFW, in Texas I'd be glad to let them flash it.

anyway to tell if my NF7-S2G and this board share the same voltage PLCC?

Scrape off the label and compare chip datasheets.

A modern BIOS like that certainly has a 'Boot block' protection. It should be possible to fix it without replacing the chip or using an external programmer.
Look here for example: http://www.biosflash.com/e/bios-update-error.htm, or try searching google for 'bootblock aspire t180' or such.

j'ordos wrote:

A modern BIOS like that certainly has a 'Boot block' protection. It should be possible to fix it without replacing the chip or using an external programmer.
Look here for example: http://www.biosflash.com/e/bios-update-error.htm, or try searching google for 'bootblock aspire t180' or such.

nope it failed in such a way the DMI data is corrupt for the board, its a known issue with this board.

So this DMI data is needed even before the BIOS can attempt to start a failsafe recovery? What is your source on this being a known issue with your board? Information from this link: http://www.motherboards.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=76346 seems to indicate that the DMI data comes from the system block and is preceded by the boot block. Are you sure the procedures outlined in that link can not help you?

yes I am, I already checked, Acer, tomshardware fourms, anand, and a dozen other sources.

IF this board had a recovery option I'd have used it. So to boot to a floppy drive I have to first get past the DMI and DMI is corrupt so im not going anywhere. Not to be rude but I do this for a living and attempting standard methods of recovering from a bad flash was the first thing I tried.

That's very weird the recovery boot didn't work for you. That doesn't use DMI data - it doesn't even initialise the video card. All you get (if you're lucky) is a beep when it starts flashing and another beep when it's done. On Intel boards that have a jumper to activate recovery mode (which I now understand the importance of having!) the system tries to read from the floppy drive immediately as soon as power is applied. What happened when you tried forcing a recovery by shorting the chip pins like the link from j'ordos explains? Did it just sit at a blank screen without reading from the floppy?

I've done the hot swap thing when I was using a motherboard as an EEPROM programmer, and it's hard enough with a DIP chip - if yours is PLCC that's going to be a bit of a challenge. The trick is to make sure you don't short the power lines when you take the chip in or out. If so you could trigger the short circuit protection in the PSU and the whole machine will shut off and you'll have to start over. Probably best to remove the chip first (with the power off) then just sit it in the socket only as far as you need to boot the machine, just to make it easier to remove once the OS has booted.

You might also want to have a look around for a device you might have that's supported by flashrom. If you can stick your failed ROM chip into a network card boot ROM socket, or even a video card ROM socket, then you may not have to swap chips while the power is on which will make the process much easier.