As I recall it, there were different kit options for the TL866 II Plus when you bought it bundled. I bought the complete kit. This was years ago; I'm not sure what is offered now.

However, for the user who needs help, I suggest reading the whole thread. As I recall, you cannot get a complete BIOS writable in the programmer. This is because of how the BIOS is split up in parts. You need to download the Recovery Mode BIOS presented by SSTV2. You program this with the external programmer, solder on the EEPROM to the motherboard. This will allow you to boot the motherboard into Recovery Mode. You will need to have the complete BIOS on a bootable diskette for which Recovery Mode can read. The screen will stay blank (I think). When it is finished, reboot, and your system will work. You then want to update to the latest BIOS.

The only means to get a complete BIOS onto your programmer would be for someone to desolder their working EEPROM, place it in the programmer, and make a copy. I don't even know if this will work properly as I haven't tested it. The method that I know works is the one presented in this thread.

feipoa wrote on 2023-02-14, 02:47:

It is trivial. download/file.php?id=66865&mode=view The adaptors come in a kit with the programmer.

The hardest part would be desoldering and resoldering, but they'd have to do this anyway.

Feipoa,

It looks like I'm going to have to do this to a motherboard in order to downgrade it -- recovery mode won't flash the lower bios revision. Do you know how to concatenate the .BIO through .BI5 files into something I can flash? There's no real indication of where they're supposed to land in the ROM. It looks like I need to flash the boot block only. Do you have any idea where to find that?

Thanks,
AN

This thread is 6 years old and I would need to read the entire thread slowly. Did you already read the 5 pages of this thread? Was the bootblock not attached anywhere, or within one of the Intel BIOS update packages? I don't recall. I don't even recall if the bootblock version needs to match the BIOS version you are trying to recover.

feipoa wrote on 2025-09-30, 04:22:

This thread is 6 years old and I would need to read the entire thread slowly. Did you already read the 5 pages of this thread? Was the bootblock not attached anywhere, or within one of the Intel BIOS update packages? I don't recall. I don't even recall if the bootblock version needs to match the BIOS version you are trying to recover.

For anyone who ends up here in the future:
The boot block should be the *.REC file that’s in the BIOS floppy. The ones with the *.B0x are the actual BIOS. If you need just the boot block it is (at least it was on my board) the file that ends in .REC.

Looking in my BIOSes directory, I have several entries for the VS440FX, and several for the boot_block. The one which looks the most promissing is:
Intel_VS440FX_boot_block_98-08-28_from_1.00.18.CS1_util.zip

Inside contains:
1018CS1_rcv.bin

This is most likely what I flashed to the EEPROM in an external programmer, then did the recovery process by setting the recovery jumper, inserting recovery diskette, then power up. I've no doubt that the details are in this thread, but will attach the file again.