Need Help Finding What the Latest BIOS for This Motherboard Is \ VOGONS

Need Help Finding What the Latest BIOS for This Motherboard Is

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First post, by ultra_code

Posted on 2018-09-30, 06:50

ultra_code Offline

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Hello VOGONS members!

Yesterday, I acquired an unknown Gateway micro-ATX motherboard from ebay. I bought it because of the CPU that came with it, a Pentium 3 1.1GHz 100MHz FSB SL5QW, that I am going to use to upgrade another retro system I have. I just finished cleaning it and the CPU, replacing the CMOS battery, throwing in some RAM, hooking up a PS/2 keyboard and monitor, connecting it to a PSU, and BAM!, it all works!

Any who, now for the reason of this post. You see, being a person who likes to make sure things are up-to-date, I naturally looked online to see if I could find the latest BIOS for the board and see if I should update it or not. Typing in the string "WL810E" (found on the back of the motherboard, shown below), brought me to this Intel support page for the D810E2CA3 motherboard. However, while both that board and this one are similar, they are not the same apparently (not talking about my exact motherboard, but close enough).

Now, upon further research, I found this post. Apparently the guy has the same motherboard, which is called the Intel Bryant R2, and it was from a Gateway Essentials 566c. Using the Wayback Machine to view one of the older pages linked by the people responding in the post, it would seem I have the latest BIOS, although the supposed BIOS flash executable in question only discloses the actual BIOS version to the "P06" part, so I cannot say if this is the same exact BIOS I have on my motherboard or not. Also, since I don't know the exact machine my motherboard came out of, I am unable to find "support" for it. And I could be wrong, but it also seems that Gateway drops support for older products such as these, no?

So, I guess my question is this: Can someone verify if I have the latest BIOS version for this motherboard, and if not, where I can find the latest version?

Pictures:

Last edited by ultra_code on 2018-11-05, 19:51. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 1 of 5, by PC Hoarder Patrol

Posted on 2018-09-30, 17:27

PC Hoarder Patrol Offline

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As far as I can find you already have the latest bios for the board (P06)

https://www.wimsbios.com/forum/what-motherboa … nual-t4576.html

The board itself seems to be based on an OEM of the Intel Willow Springs 2 (WL810E), but I couldn't see any links on the live Intel site so here's a copy of the manual.

Filename: A12504-001.pdf
File size: 340.8 KiB
Downloads: 49 downloads
File comment: Intel Willow Springs 2 (WL810E)
File license: Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 2 of 5, by ultra_code

Posted on 2018-09-30, 18:25

ultra_code Offline

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PC Hoarder Patrol wrote:
As far as I can find you already have the latest bios for the board (P06) […]
Show full quote
As far as I can find you already have the latest bios for the board (P06)

https://www.wimsbios.com/forum/what-motherboa … nual-t4576.html

The board itself seems to be based on an OEM of the Intel Willow Springs 2 (WL810E), but I couldn't see any links on the live Intel site so here's a copy of the manual.

A12504-001.pdf

Yep, that's my board alright. The manual which you provided (thanks 😀 ) more accurately depicts the board than the manual for the D810E2CA3 does.

As for the BIOS, that's also good news. Less work for me.

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Reply 3 of 5, by Thermalwrong

Posted on 2018-09-30, 23:43

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You can use the standard Intel BIOS, but you might find that the motherboard won't let you reflash because the flash utility sees the installed bios and bios update as different models. You can try recovery flashing it - which is pretty scary to do but has do-OEM'd both my Intel boards so far:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090224233143/ht … 20OEM%20version

At one point I thought I'd broken my TC430HX, but patience piad off in the end and the recovery can be tried more than once - now both my AL440LX and TC430HX boards are running the latest standard Intel bios.

In the case of the AL440LX board, it allows use of later CPUs that Dell's BIOS didn't even boot up with.

Reply 4 of 5, by ultra_code

Posted on 2018-10-01, 00:37

ultra_code Offline

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Posts: 561
Joined: 2017-10-09, 00:21

Thermalwrong wrote:
You can use the standard Intel BIOS, but you might find that the motherboard won't let you reflash because the flash utility see […]
Show full quote
You can use the standard Intel BIOS, but you might find that the motherboard won't let you reflash because the flash utility sees the installed bios and bios update as different models. You can try recovery flashing it - which is pretty scary to do but has do-OEM'd both my Intel boards so far:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090224233143/ht … 20OEM%20version

At one point I thought I'd broken my TC430HX, but patience piad off in the end and the recovery can be tried more than once - now both my AL440LX and TC430HX boards are running the latest standard Intel bios.

In the case of the AL440LX board, it allows use of later CPUs that Dell's BIOS didn't even boot up with.

That's interesting. Since I don't particularly have a use for this board, if I don't indeed sell it on ebay (which I do, but....), I might try doing that for fun. 😀

Thermalwrong wrote:
You can use the standard Intel BIOS, but you might find that the motherboard won't let you reflash because the flash utility sees the installed bios and bios update as different models.

On that subject, though. You see, I was trying to run Intel's iflash.exe program earlier that came with the latest BIOS for the D810E2CA3 board, and in my experience, running the autoexec.bat file that comes with that utility, along with the new BIOS ROM, would run a small program to make a beep using the system speaker and open up iflash.exe (at least that's what I remember). So I ran the batch file, thinking it was going to do that, and, to my horror, it tried to flash the board with this other board's BIOS! (what was going through my head that told me to try to run the batch file instead of just running iflash.exe, I couldn't tell you). After it was "done", it told me to restart the board, so I did, thinking that the next time it would boot, it would show this other board's BIOS, and... all it did was reset the BIOS's defaults. 😜

Reading the batch file afterwards showed that an argument that was passed to iflash.exe to reset BIOS defaults (in addition to of course flashing the new BIOS), but, like you mentioned, it in fact didn't flash that new BIOS because the board wouldn't allow it. Dodged a bullet caused by my stupidity there (well, more like Intel made sure that idiots like me wouldn't accidentally screw up badly like I could have 🤣 ).

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Reply 5 of 5, by PC Hoarder Patrol

Posted on 2018-10-01, 03:03

PC Hoarder Patrol Offline

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Generally the bios OEM code mismatch would stop you doing any damage beyond a default reset of the existing bios, although you can sometimes mod this code in an Intel bios to allow it to flash to an OEM board

OEM codes

86 = Intel
04 = Sony
05 = Micron
10 = Dell
11 = NEC
15 = Gateway 2000
17 = IBM
21 = HP
25 = Vobis
28 = Toshiba

For comparison, here's a pic of the Intel-branded version of your board (complete with the 4MB optional display cache)

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