I had a similar problem with a brand new (NOS) ASUS K7M a few years ago. No picture and no boot, just beeps. I created a bootable system floppy disk for BIOS update on another computer, the K7M reflashed itself and problem was solved.

Okay I reflashed the BIOS. And the board does boot! However, I get the message at boot up Checking NVRAM..... No NVRAM found! and it continues to boot. The board is strange. Very slow compared to my Gigabyte GA-7IXE board that I have. I don't know if something else is wrong? I cannot fdisk my drives? I can wipe out a partition, but I cannot create a new one? It randomly hangs on reboot, and everything just seems... I don't know, slow? The NVRAM is on the BIOS chip, right? Is it possible that in the process of reflashing the bios (using my TL866-III chip programmer) that I damaged the NVRAM area of the bios chip? Or is that stored elsewhere, like the CPU? The Athlon 700 I am using on it looks a bit different from my other one, but I know there are variations. So I'm just kinda confused as to what to do moving forward. I guess I could make a bootable system floppy with the BIOS flash tools on it and reflash the latest bios with that? Would that possibly fix it? Or is it possible that the NVRAM is just dead? Thank you for any advice you may have. With my health being a bit better I am taking advantage and doing as much as I can to make up for lost time.

nathanieltolbert wrote on 2025-08-26, 15:16:

Okay I reflashed the BIOS. And the board does boot! However, I get the message at boot up Checking NVRAM..... No NVRAM found! and it continues to boot. The board is strange. Very slow compared to my Gigabyte GA-7IXE board that I have. I don't know if something else is wrong? I cannot fdisk my drives? I can wipe out a partition, but I cannot create a new one? It randomly hangs on reboot, and everything just seems... I don't know, slow? The NVRAM is on the BIOS chip, right? Is it possible that in the process of reflashing the bios (using my TL866-III chip programmer) that I damaged the NVRAM area of the bios chip? Or is that stored elsewhere, like the CPU? The Athlon 700 I am using on it looks a bit different from my other one, but I know there are variations. So I'm just kinda confused as to what to do moving forward. I guess I could make a bootable system floppy with the BIOS flash tools on it and reflash the latest bios with that? Would that possibly fix it? Or is it possible that the NVRAM is just dead? Thank you for any advice you may have. With my health being a bit better I am taking advantage and doing as much as I can to make up for lost time.

If you have a spare bios chip use it instead of this.
NVRAM could be that it reached its number of r/w cycles and thus won't be able to work correctly.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-08-26, 17:06:

nathanieltolbert wrote on 2025-08-26, 15:16:

Okay I reflashed the BIOS. And the board does boot! However, I get the message at boot up Checking NVRAM..... No NVRAM found! and it continues to boot. The board is strange. Very slow compared to my Gigabyte GA-7IXE board that I have. I don't know if something else is wrong? I cannot fdisk my drives? I can wipe out a partition, but I cannot create a new one? It randomly hangs on reboot, and everything just seems... I don't know, slow? The NVRAM is on the BIOS chip, right? Is it possible that in the process of reflashing the bios (using my TL866-III chip programmer) that I damaged the NVRAM area of the bios chip? Or is that stored elsewhere, like the CPU? The Athlon 700 I am using on it looks a bit different from my other one, but I know there are variations. So I'm just kinda confused as to what to do moving forward. I guess I could make a bootable system floppy with the BIOS flash tools on it and reflash the latest bios with that? Would that possibly fix it? Or is it possible that the NVRAM is just dead? Thank you for any advice you may have. With my health being a bit better I am taking advantage and doing as much as I can to make up for lost time.

If you have a spare bios chip use it instead of this.
NVRAM could be that it reached its number of r/w cycles and thus won't be able to work correctly.

I will try and order a replacement SST 349SF020 then.

nathanieltolbert wrote on 2025-08-26, 17:13:

Nexxen wrote on 2025-08-26, 17:06:

nathanieltolbert wrote on 2025-08-26, 15:16:

Okay I reflashed the BIOS. And the board does boot! However, I get the message at boot up Checking NVRAM..... No NVRAM found! and it continues to boot. The board is strange. Very slow compared to my Gigabyte GA-7IXE board that I have. I don't know if something else is wrong? I cannot fdisk my drives? I can wipe out a partition, but I cannot create a new one? It randomly hangs on reboot, and everything just seems... I don't know, slow? The NVRAM is on the BIOS chip, right? Is it possible that in the process of reflashing the bios (using my TL866-III chip programmer) that I damaged the NVRAM area of the bios chip? Or is that stored elsewhere, like the CPU? The Athlon 700 I am using on it looks a bit different from my other one, but I know there are variations. So I'm just kinda confused as to what to do moving forward. I guess I could make a bootable system floppy with the BIOS flash tools on it and reflash the latest bios with that? Would that possibly fix it? Or is it possible that the NVRAM is just dead? Thank you for any advice you may have. With my health being a bit better I am taking advantage and doing as much as I can to make up for lost time.

If you have a spare bios chip use it instead of this.
NVRAM could be that it reached its number of r/w cycles and thus won't be able to work correctly.

I will try and order a replacement SST 349SF020 then.

https://www.cpu-world.com/

Here you can find useful info on K7.

Replacing the BIOS chip didn't help. That must mean that I'm not flashing it properly with the TL866 programmer. I am not finding any guides that say any specific way to flash bios chips anywhere though?

Load the BIOS ROM into XGPro, select the correct EEPROM and 'burn' it. There's nothing else to it.

Is your programmer a fake perhaps? Not that I have experience with fakes... Could work as good, don't know. 🙃

I couldn't say if it's a fake programmer or not. The software XGpro works and recognizes the programmer specifically as T48 (TL866-3G) Ver: 00.01.34 and I have written other chips with this and they work fine, but for whatever reason I cannot seem to get this SST39SF020 to program where the NVRAM shows up when I boot the board with it. Another strangeness is if I try to use the BIOS program to write the newest BIOS file to the chip from the PC, I get an error about being able to erase the chip. The program cannot identify the chip at all which is strange. And it does the same thing with the new chip I got. I made sure that I got a 39SF020 and not the 39SF020A because I wasn't certain looking at the datasheets that they were the same. Based on my limited knowledge of flashing chips, especially PC BIOS chips outside of the board, I cannot help but think I have made a mistake somewhere in the BIOS flash process with the TL866 and I have either permanently damaged the chip or need to make a simple change to fix the whole issue.

nathanieltolbert wrote on 2025-08-29, 16:43:

I couldn't say if it's a fake programmer or not. The software XGpro works and recognizes the programmer specifically as T48 (TL866-3G) Ver: 00.01.34 and I have written other chips with this and they work fine, but for whatever reason I cannot seem to get this SST39SF020 to program where the NVRAM shows up when I boot the board with it. Another strangeness is if I try to use the BIOS program to write the newest BIOS file to the chip from the PC, I get an error about being able to erase the chip. The program cannot identify the chip at all which is strange. And it does the same thing with the new chip I got. I made sure that I got a 39SF020 and not the 39SF020A because I wasn't certain looking at the datasheets that they were the same. Based on my limited knowledge of flashing chips, especially PC BIOS chips outside of the board, I cannot help but think I have made a mistake somewhere in the BIOS flash process with the TL866 and I have either permanently damaged the chip or need to make a simple change to fix the whole issue.

Do you have other socket 462 motherbaords?
Try one bios and see what it does. It can't kill the board, no risks.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-08-29, 18:18:

Do you have other socket 462 motherbaords?
Try one bios and see what it does. It can't kill the board, no risks.

I have a couple 462 motherboards, most of them newer chipsets like the Nforce 2 400 and Nforce 2 Ultra. However, the K7M is a Slot A board. I have a Gigabyte 7IXE board and I checked but the BIOS chip on it is different. That board works great and the NVRAM works perfectly. I dunno. I am worried to fiddle with the BIOS chip from the 7IXE board as it is the only other Slot A board I have. I have been saving up to get a KT133 chipset Slot A with the AGP 4x Slot, but they have become difficult to find and expensive to purchase online since I don't have any communities locally here in the States near me. I guess one Slot A board working is better than none. I was just hopeful I could fix it. But whatever is wrong or that I am doing wrong is stopping me. I mean the machine works, but if you do a reset it hangs, if you set the board jumpers to disable the Audio hardware built in the machine will not even post with a Sound Blaster AWE 64 in the ISA slot or a SB Live! in the third PCI slot (that one is not supposed to be sharing an IRQ with USB or AGP if I read the manual correctly?). I know there is a possibility that these issues have nothing to do with the bios, but I can't tell because I can't fix this new BIOS thing with the No NVRAM. I love my retro computers but they consistently remind me that I am a very low intelligence person. 😁

nathanieltolbert wrote on 2025-08-29, 20:09:

Sometimes I wonder what I think when I write.
Of course it was not a 462 but a slot A, my apologies.

Try removing everything from the board except VGA. Does it hang?
Add stuff one thing at a time.
If yes, try a different slot.

It sucks, but it happened to me too 😀

The machine boots without the the soundcard installed. With a bit of finagling I can get the machine to boot with the soundcard inserted as well. But only the SB Live! X-Gamer card, and not the ISA SB AWE 64. I screw up socket names and numbers as well. It hilarious to me that I do it since I have been using and building PCs since I did the first one with my dad when I was 15 back in 1995. So with the VGA card only in the machine the board will always post no problem with the Live card in it will boot most of the time, but not always. And it still won't boot at all with the AWE 64 card. If I change the slot for the SB Live card I get conflicts when it tries to load the DOS resources. That's a problem I will deal with later as I cannot get the system stable in Windows let alone DOS. I am using my original Windows 98 Second Edition disc that I've had since some time in 1999. And if I send a reset command to the motherboard it will post and when it gets to scanning the IDE channels it hangs. Just says please wait. Here's something interesting though. With the Beta BIOS and using a USB keyboard it will reset properly about 25% of the time. This board has some very strange issues and I have to wonder how many of them are self inflicted.

So I got another SST 39SF020 that is supposed to be NOS and flashed it and tried it. Same issue No NVRAM. The issue now stems that I cannot be sure that the chips that I bought are legit NOS or used. It's very difficult for me to tell. Is there anyone here who can confirm or deny if the 39SF020 is replaceable with the 39SF020A?

Those chips should be interchangeable and my feeling is the BIOS chip itself may not be the problem here.
I'm thinking about where the missing NVRAM actually is located and I think I can remember that there's some memory to store CMOS settings within some southbridges. But I can't say for sure atm. It's just some vague memory and could be totally wrong.
Maybe you can have a look into the datasheet for your southbridge and see if there's something about it.
IF it is like this and combined with the other symptoms you described (slow overall system, problems with drives, etc.) it COULD point to some problem located there. This may be a dead end at all but if nothing else works surely worth a look.

One question: have you left the pc on for like 30 minutes and then reset?
I'd like to see what is the behaviour.

If it can read but not write, could it be that some required signal or voltage isn't at the correct value?
To write to nvram it needs to do so at a determined voltage. Maybe a component around the bios has failed?

If you have a card inserted that doesn't allow nvram writing, but if removed it does, it could be a signal too low.
I'd check resistor networks to see if values match. ISA is connected to Data and Address to BIOS.

This is a wild guess, possibly I'm totally wrong.
An expert is needed here and that's not me 😀

ChrisK wrote on 2025-09-16, 10:02:

Those chips should be interchangeable and my feeling is the BIOS chip itself may not be the problem here. I'm thinking about whe […]
Show full quote

Those chips should be interchangeable and my feeling is the BIOS chip itself may not be the problem here.
I'm thinking about where the missing NVRAM actually is located and I think I can remember that there's some memory to store CMOS settings within some southbridges. But I can't say for sure atm. It's just some vague memory and could be totally wrong.
Maybe you can have a look into the datasheet for your southbridge and see if there's something about it.
IF it is like this and combined with the other symptoms you described (slow overall system, problems with drives, etc.) it COULD point to some problem located there. This may be a dead end at all but if nothing else works surely worth a look.

The interesting thing about the K7M is that it uses the 751 for the northbridge and then a VIA686A for the southbridge. I'm having a bit of trouble in finding a datasheet. I cannot find anything that corroborates the NVRAM is in the BIOS chip or not. I know the 7IXE board I have says the NVRAM is good, but it has the 751 and the 756 for the chipset. I wish I could find more but my google-fu doesn't seem to be working great.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-09-16, 10:25:

One question: have you left the pc on for like 30 minutes and then reset? I'd like to see what is the behaviour. […]
Show full quote

One question: have you left the pc on for like 30 minutes and then reset?
I'd like to see what is the behaviour.

If it can read but not write, could it be that some required signal or voltage isn't at the correct value?
To write to nvram it needs to do so at a determined voltage. Maybe a component around the bios has failed?

If you have a card inserted that doesn't allow nvram writing, but if removed it does, it could be a signal too low.
I'd check resistor networks to see if values match. ISA is connected to Data and Address to BIOS.

This is a wild guess, possibly I'm totally wrong.
An expert is needed here and that's not me 😀

I have left the computer on overnight, the reset behaviour is present regardless of the amount of time the computer is on for. I have tried removing all cards and all drives and using a pci S3 Trio just for video output and the results are the same. I think you might be onto something with the signal being too low. I did replace a section of caps originally for this board because the voltage was off we thought (I think it was that the battery in my voltimeter was low). Where would I find the resistor networks values so I can confirm them?

nathanieltolbert wrote on Yesterday, 03:13:

ChrisK wrote on 2025-09-16, 10:02:

Those chips should be interchangeable and my feeling is the BIOS chip itself may not be the problem here. I'm thinking about whe […]
Show full quote

Those chips should be interchangeable and my feeling is the BIOS chip itself may not be the problem here.
I'm thinking about where the missing NVRAM actually is located and I think I can remember that there's some memory to store CMOS settings within some southbridges. But I can't say for sure atm. It's just some vague memory and could be totally wrong.
Maybe you can have a look into the datasheet for your southbridge and see if there's something about it.
IF it is like this and combined with the other symptoms you described (slow overall system, problems with drives, etc.) it COULD point to some problem located there. This may be a dead end at all but if nothing else works surely worth a look.

The interesting thing about the K7M is that it uses the 751 for the northbridge and then a VIA686A for the southbridge. I'm having a bit of trouble in finding a datasheet. I cannot find anything that corroborates the NVRAM is in the BIOS chip or not. I know the 7IXE board I have says the NVRAM is good, but it has the 751 and the 756 for the chipset. I wish I could find more but my google-fu doesn't seem to be working great.

?
from

https://theretroweb.com/chip/documentation/68 … 6e776850263.pdf

VT82C686A "Super South" South Bridge

d) Real Time Clock with 256 byte extended CMOS. In addition to the standard ISA RTC functionality, the integrated RTC also
includes the date alarm, century field, and other enhancements for compatibility with the ACPI standard

Full datasheet

ChrisK wrote on Yesterday, 15:03:

Full datasheet

Thank you. Is there a specific place I should go to look for datasheets online? I did a search and even though I had two links that said they were data sheets, they took me to a site that wanted me to pay money to access datasheets at all and they didn't even have the one I was looking for.