Got the 3.07G version to work now!
Must have inserted the eprom a bit careless and not fully connected 🥴

ChrisR3tro wrote on 2024-01-03, 18:51:

Recently I played around with the FIC 486-GVT-2 mainboard and once I upgraded the BIOS from version 3.07G to the newest (beta) B […]
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Recently I played around with the FIC 486-GVT-2 mainboard and once I upgraded the BIOS from version 3.07G to the newest (beta) BIOS 3.276GN1 (which includes the Y2k fix), the system had trouble POSTing and booting. This beta BIOS should (according to a note on the FIC FTP site which was posted above) be usable on the 486-GVT-2, but turns out it has some problems.

I had a 486 DX2-80 CPU installed and while that ran fine with the older BIOS. However, I could not get it to boot correctly at all with the newer BIOS. Also using the IDE auto-detect tool in the BIOS seems to mess up CMOS settings completely. There are also new BIOS options refering to onboard IDE-, FDC- and I/O controllers, which are not even present on this board, so that's not very trust inspiring either. Also the beta BIOS comes with a Cirrus Logic VBIOS prefixed to the main AWARD image and the GVT-2 doesn't have onboard graphics. It will boot with that, but it's not optimal if you ask me.

After chatting with computerguy096 from The Retro Web which has the same board model and ran into similar glitches with the CMOS settings, he advised me to try setting jumpers for DX2-66 and finally the board could boot into DOS! But once I set jumpers back to 80 Mhz, it got stuck on POST or boot again. He also mentioned that he couldn't get the board to boot with a Pentium Overdrive using the beta BIOS.

My conclusion: The BIOS might work on other FIC boards but on 486-GVT-2 it's definitely very flaky and I can't recommend using it, even with a DX2-66. FIC probably put out this BIOS hastily and didn't really test it thoroughly on all boards it's meant to be for.

ChrisR3tro

BETA means that it isnt a official bios.. And its not even garanteed to work stable.
The best thing to do most is to avoid these BETA bioses..
But mostly its using on your own risk.