Updating BIOS on a Gateway 2000 VS440FX motherboard \ VOGONS

Updating BIOS on a Gateway 2000 VS440FX motherboard

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First post, by hgoshev

Posted on 2019-02-06, 22:18

hgoshev Offline

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Hi, guys!

I have a Gateway 2000 Socket 8 motherboard with the VS440FX chipset, its current BIOS signature being 1.00.04.CS1T. I am looking to update it to the latest available BIOS version from Intel's website (1.00.18.CS1) in order to be able to use large HDDs and the PII OD CPU. Unfortunately, the updater fails, refusing to initiate the erase process.

I have read online that OEM VS440FX motherboards can be updated with the Intel BIOS after some tweaking. Has anyone performed this operation successfully? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Reply 1 of 7, by gbeirn

Posted on 2019-02-07, 02:08

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I’ve done this before and I believe you need to put the bios file on a floppy and jumper the board for bios recovery mode. It should boot and flash.

Reply 2 of 7, by hgoshev

Posted on 2019-02-07, 15:12

hgoshev Offline

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Thank you so much - it worked!

Reply 3 of 7, by gbeirn

Posted on 2019-02-08, 02:25

gbeirn Offline

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Great! So I know and for future people, do you have to name the BIOS file anything special?

Reply 4 of 7, by bofh.fromhell

Posted on 2019-02-09, 16:19

bofh.fromhell Offline

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Just did this on my Gateway VS440FX.
Made a driver free bootdisk from bootdisk.com and just followed the Intel instructions:
->bios.exe a:

Moved the jumper from 4-6 to 2-4 and booted.
Took a couple of nervous minutes with blank screen, and i heard no beeps.

After reboot the "Gateway 2000" post screen is gone and bios version is .18

edit:
And performance "jumped" from 20 to 22 cb in "Cinebench 2003" =)
Running Windows 2000, 256kb@233MHz with 96MB EDO.

Reply 5 of 7, by Rollotiz83

Posted on 2021-06-28, 21:10

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hgoshev wrote on 2019-02-07, 15:12:

Thank you so much - it worked!

Hi!I’m trying to flash my bios too…so i created a Bootable floppy, then bios A: to transfer the new bios (1.00.18 cs1). So i moved jumpers, insert floppy and start…but Nothing happened, no beep no floppy read only black screen…help me!!😅thanks

Reply 6 of 7, by Rollotiz83

Posted on 2021-09-05, 15:23

Rollotiz83 Offline

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Hi! Finally I flashed my mobo and now I have the latest BIOS! Thanks for help... but now my ppro200 Is a 180 for bios... do you know why?

Reply 7 of 7, by rkurbatov

Posted on 2023-08-08, 00:10

rkurbatov Offline

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Hello from 2023. I suppose you just set your bus frequency from 66 to 60 MHz while playing with jumpers. 60x3 = 180, 66x3 = 198 (or 200).

486: ECS UM486 VLB, 256kb cache, i486 DX2/66, 8MB RAM, Trident TGUI9440AGi VLB 1MB, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, FDD 3.5, ZIP 100 ATA
PII: Asus P2B, Pentium II 400MHz, 512MB RAM, Trident 9750 AGP 4MB, Voodoo2 SLI, MonsterSound MX300

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