This is a bit risky and depends on how many spare motherboards you have with an identical BIOS chip but you could flash the BIOS for the Acorp board on a donor board with an identical chip and simply swap chips. I believe you can swap the chip with the donor board still running so you can flash back the donor board's BIOS on the chip you got from the Acorp board.

I have done this in the past with a donor Asus P2B to get my P2B-DS board running again but I probably don't have to explain why this can leave you with two broken boards.

Fr0ns wrote on 2024-12-27, 14:58:

This is a bit risky and depends on how many spare motherboards you have with an identical BIOS chip but you could flash the BIOS for the Acorp board on a donor board with an identical chip and simply swap chips. I believe you can swap the chip with the donor board still running so you can flash back the donor board's BIOS on the chip you got from the Acorp board.

I have done this in the past with a donor Asus P2B to get my P2B-DS board running again but I probably don't have to explain why this can leave you with two broken boards.

Thanks for the reply.

So can I just take off the BIOS chip off the donor board while it's still running? Wouldn't it make more sense just to take out the donor board's chip, so it is not changed, put the Acorp board's chip in, flash the bios, take out the Acorp chip, put the donor board's chip in?

Here's a good video on both a boot block recovery, and hot swap BIOS flashing methods. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45UQ8Y8rl4s

The boot block flash may take care of the issue for you, but this video demonstrates how to do both. One thing not mentioned in the video that I find helpful is to have a piece of string (dental floss is handy) between the BIOS chip and the socket for ease of extraction.

songoffall wrote on 2024-12-27, 15:30:

Fr0ns wrote on 2024-12-27, 14:58:

This is a bit risky and depends on how many spare motherboards you have with an identical BIOS chip but you could flash the BIOS for the Acorp board on a donor board with an identical chip and simply swap chips. I believe you can swap the chip with the donor board still running so you can flash back the donor board's BIOS on the chip you got from the Acorp board.

I have done this in the past with a donor Asus P2B to get my P2B-DS board running again but I probably don't have to explain why this can leave you with two broken boards.

Thanks for the reply.

So can I just take off the BIOS chip off the donor board while it's still running? Wouldn't it make more sense just to take out the donor board's chip, so it is not changed, put the Acorp board's chip in, flash the bios, take out the Acorp chip, put the donor board's chip in?

In my case this worked. This was over 15 years ago so I can't tell you all the details. Only use a board you're willing to sacrifice of course and you should be able to find some more online threads on this.

You can do that, given you keep the donor board running while you swap the chips.

Thanks, friends. I was able to restore the BIOS. The floppy disk was just a waste of time, but hot swapping BIOS chips worked like a charm!

songoffall wrote on 2024-12-27, 15:30:

Fr0ns wrote on 2024-12-27, 14:58:

This is a bit risky and depends on how many spare motherboards you have with an identical BIOS chip but you could flash the BIOS for the Acorp board on a donor board with an identical chip and simply swap chips. I believe you can swap the chip with the donor board still running so you can flash back the donor board's BIOS on the chip you got from the Acorp board.

I have done this in the past with a donor Asus P2B to get my P2B-DS board running again but I probably don't have to explain why this can leave you with two broken boards.

Thanks for the reply.

So can I just take off the BIOS chip off the donor board while it's still running? Wouldn't it make more sense just to take out the donor board's chip, so it is not changed, put the Acorp board's chip in, flash the bios, take out the Acorp chip, put the donor board's chip in?

Correct. Start board in which you will flash, let it get to command prompt. Remove it's bios (helps if you loosen it previously just have it barely in socket) insert bios to be flashed, remove when finished. Do take care and make sure the chips are compatible/ before flashing (,there are different pin outs). Make sure bios is set to "shadow" in setup previously, this ensures it's copied to ram before you pop it out. Also you may want to use uniflash to do this, I have had other programs (amiflash) freeze on me, however that may be hardware dependent and not apply to you.

songoffall wrote on 2024-12-28, 16:24:

Thanks, friends. I was able to restore the BIOS. The floppy disk was just a waste of time, but hot swapping BIOS chips worked like a charm!

Great ! Glad it worked. There is always the possibility of ruining the donor board or the eeprom...

Check your RAM modules with MemTest86 or equivalent software.

I had two Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M bricked by a single faulty RAM; they displayed the same floppy request message (and I managed to make one with marginal success) before got bricked completely. Unfortunately their BIOS chips (PLCC32 package) were soldered instead of socketed; the learning curve and cost of desoldering, programming, and resoldering PLCC32 chips would exceed buying another MB by a very big margin so I gave up (sigh). Didn't know that RAM could corrupt BIOS until this expensive lesson.

Wow this is my 1000th post on VOGONS!

Horun wrote on 2024-12-28, 18:23:

songoffall wrote on 2024-12-28, 16:24:

Thanks, friends. I was able to restore the BIOS. The floppy disk was just a waste of time, but hot swapping BIOS chips worked like a charm!

Great ! Glad it worked. There is always the possibility of ruining the donor board or the eeprom...

Yes, but that's a chance I had to take. I took out the original EPROM out of the donor board first, placed the EPROM with corrupted BIOS, dumped its contents, so I could investigate: either it got corrupted while flashing, or the BIOS file I flashed to it was wrong. It was corrupted while flashing.

Next I flashed a new BIOS to the EPROM and confirmed it was uncorrupted, and shut down the donor board.

Put the old EPROM back into the donor board. Minimizing the flashing operations to one EPROM chip should minimize the risks to the donor board too.

Then I put the newly flashed EPROM into the board I was saving, and voila, it worked.

dormcat wrote on 2024-12-28, 19:42:

Check your RAM modules with MemTest86 or equivalent software.

I had two Gigabyte GA-K8VM800M bricked by a single faulty RAM; they displayed the same floppy request message (and I managed to make one with marginal success) before got bricked completely. Unfortunately their BIOS chips (PLCC32 package) were soldered instead of socketed; the learning curve and cost of desoldering, programming, and resoldering PLCC32 chips would exceed buying another MB by a very big margin so I gave up (sigh). Didn't know that RAM could corrupt BIOS until this expensive lesson.

Wow this is my 1000th post on VOGONS!

I'll do that. BTW you don't need to desolder the BIOS chip, there are clamp adapters that allow you to program the BIOS directly on the board. If you still have it, might be worth a try.

Fr0ns wrote on 2024-12-27, 14:58:

This is a bit risky and depends on how many spare motherboards you have with an identical BIOS chip but you could flash the BIOS for the Acorp board on a donor board with an identical chip and simply swap chips. I believe you can swap the chip with the donor board still running so you can flash back the donor board's BIOS on the chip you got from the Acorp board.

I have done this in the past with a donor Asus P2B to get my P2B-DS board running again but I probably don't have to explain why this can leave you with two broken boards.

I have gotten pretty good at this as of late 😀 I recommend having the bios loosened/not fully seated in it's socket, if it's in a tighter area you can use 2 zip ties looped under it to help pull it out safely while it's on. And don't be afraid to try numerous utilities, not all of them like this being done, I think I had to use uniflash in the end

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-03-22, 19:01:

Fr0ns wrote on 2024-12-27, 14:58:

This is a bit risky and depends on how many spare motherboards you have with an identical BIOS chip but you could flash the BIOS for the Acorp board on a donor board with an identical chip and simply swap chips. I believe you can swap the chip with the donor board still running so you can flash back the donor board's BIOS on the chip you got from the Acorp board.

I have done this in the past with a donor Asus P2B to get my P2B-DS board running again but I probably don't have to explain why this can leave you with two broken boards.

I have gotten pretty good at this as of late 😀 I recommend having the bios loosened/not fully seated in it's socket, if it's in a tighter area you can use 2 zip ties looped under it to help pull it out safely while it's on. And don't be afraid to try numerous utilities, not all of them like this being done, I think I had to use uniflash in the end

If you do this frequently then consider buying a DIP32 ZIF socket. Of course then you're spending money, but it's a cheaper alternative to buying a real programmer.
The trouble with this is that ZIF sockets are bulky and might not fit. When I did this I found a board that had the BIOS socket in a convenient place, and stacked up some regular DIP sockets with the ZIF on top. Making a tower of sockets like this *does* affect the reliability of the connection though.

I only did this with DIPs, I don't know the economics or practicality of a PLCC ZIF socket. They exist but they might cost way too much. Also be careful about 3.3V vs 5V when dealing with PLCC, because both types are commonly found on motherboards.