VOGONS


First post, by meljor

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Does anyone here have a bios for the 486 pci board Acer AP43 ?

Can this even be flashed and how? I have experience with flashing bios files but never did this on computers this old and i don't want to screw things up....it is my only 486 pci board (searched a long time for it).

I want to flash it because mine does not support the x4 setting correctly for my AMD 5x86. It runs now at 3x50 but the timings become really slow and i would really like to try 4x40mhz.
It has a graphical ami bios.

Some people here have this board running fine with this cpu but my bios date is before the 5x86 even came out so assume that is the problem. When i set it up for this cpu it runs very VERY slow and the bios says ''unknown cpu'',and my Hdd will no longer work.... When i set it up like a dx2 cpu it runs at a 3x multi and ignores the 4x somehow.

My bios is from august 95, the AMD 5x86 was introduced in december 95 so i need a bios from december 95 or later 🤣

Thanx!

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Reply 1 of 2, by TheMobRules

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I'm not familiar with that specific board, but generally for a 486 you don't have any flash tools that you can run from the command line as you do on more modern computers.

Some 486 boards have UV-erasable EPROM chips (these have a little window covered by a label), which means that you need to erase the chip using UV light and write the new BIOS with a ROM programmer (or just write the new BIOS to another chip that is compatible with the one that came with the board).

Another possibility is that the board uses an EEPROM/Flash chip (seems to be the case based on the pictures I found for your board). In this case you can erase and rewrite the BIOS using a programmer.

So, unless there actually is a tool that allows you to reflash the BIOS, you will probably need a programmer (or someone to do it for you).

There's also the "hotlfash" trick, but I won't get into that since you said you don't want to screw things up 😁

The first thing I would do is to find out what kind (manufacturer + model) of ROM chip you have on your board and then try to find an updated BIOS on the web or someone with that board who can dump it. Then you can move on to the flashing.

Reply 2 of 2, by Robin4

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Those Eproms cant be flashed, they need to be programmed with a eprom programmer.. If you work on these boards an USB Eprom programmer from ebay is highly recommended.

~ At least it can do black and white~