mt777 wrote on 2020-09-16, 01:24:

MRVFONE wrote on 2020-08-25, 08:50:

Has anyone had issues getting into the MR BIOS menu?? Mine says to press ESC.... But nothing happnes. Tryed a diffrent keyboard.. no change. The leds blink on the keyboards when there pluged in etc.... Have to see if i can find an old DIN type plug just in case...

I had similiar problems with asus 386 when FPU was improper set via jumper

Try CTRL-ALT-ESC instead.

For reference, wanted to document some attempts I made with a few of these BIOSes on a Diamond Flower 386/25-33-40UCE Rev A board. (Board is extremely similar to the 386/33-40UCE that has available jumper info online-- but it isn't the same board! The locations of everything are moved around ever so slightly...) The board uses the UMC UM82C481BF/UM82C482AF chipset. That lines up with the following files listed earlier in the thread:

V037B301 UMC_301 UMC WriteBack 82C48X 386 WriteBack, Rev 0 *ONLY*
V037B302 UMC_302 UMC WriteBack 82C48X 386 WriteBack, Rev A,B *ONLY* (Not REV-0 !)
V037B304 UMC_304 UMC WriteBack 82C48X 386 WriteBack, Rev A,B *ONLY* (Not REV-0 !) x037b302, for Cyrix layout with A20M and FLUSH

None of these worked 100% correctly. V037B301 just causes the speaker to emit a low tone (probably expected since it's "Rev 0 Only"). V037B302 and V037B304 boot fine but only detected memory in Bank 0. (I have eight 1MB SIMMs installed across Bank 0 and Bank 1, which are detected and functional on the original AMIBIOS). I don't expect there's really a solution to this, but I thought I'd report it as it could affect other UM82C48x boards.

I have a about 6 or 7 motherboards (386) with MR BIOS ROM's... have been meaning to dump / back them up.

I recall there may be a way to do it in DOS without requiring a EPROM programmer, it that right?

386_junkie wrote on 2020-09-22, 18:27:

I have a about 6 or 7 motherboards (386) with MR BIOS ROM's... have been meaning to dump / back them up.

I recall there may be a way to do it in DOS without requiring a EPROM programmer, it that right?

programmer is the best to use, software methods are not 100%
you will get some data but it would not be the data on the eprom and thus will be unusable
we've faced this on the amstrad 486slc bios images, software grabbers like NSSI did not produce correct data

Guys, I have a Seritech SER-386ADIII with ALI M1429/M1431 chipset. Every time I install an FPU it hangs and won't boot, or be very very unstable. Was thinking of trying a MR-BIOS with it, but I haven't found any for ALI chipsets. Is there anything out there?

Photo taken from another user:

Am386DX-40 wrote on 2020-10-03, 05:45:

Guys, I have a Seritech SER-386ADIII with ALI M1429/M1431 chipset. Every time I install an FPU it hangs and won't boot, or be ve […]
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Guys, I have a Seritech SER-386ADIII with ALI M1429/M1431 chipset. Every time I install an FPU it hangs and won't boot, or be very very unstable. Was thinking of trying a MR-BIOS with it, but I haven't found any for ALI chipsets. Is there anything out there?

Photo taken from another user:

Firstly, desolder that barrel battery before it causes damage.

There might be a jumper on the motherboard that enables and disables the FPU. Have a look on Th99 to see if you can identify your board.

The chipset is the ALI M1429, which was quite a common chipset used by 386 motherboards from that era.

jesolo wrote on 2020-10-03, 07:57:

Firstly, desolder that barrel battery before it causes damage. […]
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Am386DX-40 wrote on 2020-10-03, 05:45:

Guys, I have a Seritech SER-386ADIII with ALI M1429/M1431 chipset. Every time I install an FPU it hangs and won't boot, or be ve […]
Show full quote

Guys, I have a Seritech SER-386ADIII with ALI M1429/M1431 chipset. Every time I install an FPU it hangs and won't boot, or be very very unstable. Was thinking of trying a MR-BIOS with it, but I haven't found any for ALI chipsets. Is there anything out there?

Photo taken from another user:

Firstly, desolder that barrel battery before it causes damage.

There might be a jumper on the motherboard that enables and disables the FPU. Have a look on Th99 to see if you can identify your board.

The chipset is the ALI M1429, which was quite a common chipset used by 386 motherboards from that era.

That's not my actual board, it's a picture I found here on vogons. It's exactly the same though. There's no jumper for FPU, just an option in the bios to try to detect it or not.

I'm desperately looking for the Acer M1209 files. These would apply to the Acer 1116sx/1120sx and Canon C-200 computers, among others probably.

V058B300 ACER300 386SX chipset, no turbo-LED
V058B304 ACER304 x058B300 with turbo-LED active Lo (TL-)
V058B305 ACER305 x058B300 with turbo-LED active Hi (TL+)

V058B301 ACER301 no turbo-LED, with fast-A20 optimization (*)
V058B306 ACER306 (TL-) with fast-A20 optimization (*)
V058B307 ACER307 (TL+) with fast-A20 optimization (*)

Hi All

Being stuck home and all I've gotten the itch to play around with vintage hardware from my childhood. To that end I acquired a Packard Bell p166 which uses the 430vx chipset. Unfortunately the PCI video card I had laying around isnt recognized by the system but I think it's because it may be a pci v2 vs 2.3 issue. Was hoping a MRBIOS flash would address the problem...

In that vein, does anyone know where to get the correct exe tools to flash? I *think* I found the BIOS I need from the Evergreen Spectra CD (V09ab5ni.eti), but not sure how to get this loaded. The Spectra setup constantly asks me to put a floppy in A:, however I did that with a floppy made from the disk image in the same post, and it still won't proceed. Figured I may be able to take the V09ab5ni.eti file, rename to .bio and use it with standard MRFLASH tool.

Any ideas?

Thanks

drosse1meyer wrote on 2020-11-17, 17:51:

Hi All […]
Show full quote

Hi All

Being stuck home and all I've gotten the itch to play around with vintage hardware from my childhood. To that end I acquired a Packard Bell p166 which uses the 430vx chipset. Unfortunately the PCI video card I had laying around isnt recognized by the system but I think it's because it may be a pci v2 vs 2.3 issue. Was hoping a MRBIOS flash would address the problem...

In that vein, does anyone know where to get the correct exe tools to flash? I *think* I found the BIOS I need from the Evergreen Spectra CD (V09ab5ni.eti), but not sure how to get this loaded. The Spectra setup constantly asks me to put a floppy in A:, however I did that with a floppy made from the disk image in the same post, and it still won't proceed. Figured I may be able to take the V09ab5ni.eti file, rename to .bio and use it with standard MRFLASH tool.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Those eti files are some kind of proprietary format. You can't flash them directly. It is possible to interrupt the floppy boot process to get to a command prompt and run the flash utility manually. It may know how to decompress the rom file. Just be careful, there's often no going back unless you have a rom burner.

techweenie wrote on 2020-11-17, 18:03:

drosse1meyer wrote on 2020-11-17, 17:51:

Hi All […]
Show full quote

Hi All

Being stuck home and all I've gotten the itch to play around with vintage hardware from my childhood. To that end I acquired a Packard Bell p166 which uses the 430vx chipset. Unfortunately the PCI video card I had laying around isnt recognized by the system but I think it's because it may be a pci v2 vs 2.3 issue. Was hoping a MRBIOS flash would address the problem...

In that vein, does anyone know where to get the correct exe tools to flash? I *think* I found the BIOS I need from the Evergreen Spectra CD (V09ab5ni.eti), but not sure how to get this loaded. The Spectra setup constantly asks me to put a floppy in A:, however I did that with a floppy made from the disk image in the same post, and it still won't proceed. Figured I may be able to take the V09ab5ni.eti file, rename to .bio and use it with standard MRFLASH tool.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Those eti files are some kind of proprietary format. You can't flash them directly. It is possible to interrupt the floppy boot process to get to a command prompt and run the flash utility manually. It may know how to decompress the rom file. Just be careful, there's often no going back unless you have a rom burner.

Wow thanks for the fast reply.

That's too bad. So I guess the only way forward is to get this Spectra app working right in win95, or acquire the official MRBIOS for a PB Orlando motherboard. Maybe someone will see this and be kind enough to post or link files as I can't seem to find much out there 🙁

We have the MR BIOS for the ALi 1217, but the 1209 hasn't been found yet.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-11-18, 05:53:

We have the MR BIOS for the ALi 1217, but the 1209 hasn't been found yet.

I tried the 1217 MR BIOS on my 1209 and it was not happy. Oh well.

techweenie wrote on 2020-11-19, 05:35:

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-11-18, 05:53:

We have the MR BIOS for the ALi 1217, but the 1209 hasn't been found yet.

I tried the 1217 MR BIOS on my 1209 and it was not happy. Oh well.

Sad to hear that. I have an old 1209 board and I'd love to put MR Bios on it.

MG TK 82C480 + V037B40G - UMC WriteBack 82C48X 486

I had this motherboard to fix without bios and on the first try .. it works .....

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,

PS. If anyone has the original bios it would do me a great pleasure

My googleing skills have not been enough... 🙁

It would be absolutely amazing, if someone would have MR BIOS for SIS 85C471 based chipsets.
Information from one of the bios packs here, in the thread: (but the bios itself was missing 🙁 )

1Filename   Port      Description  SIS 85C471
2--------   -------   ---------------------------------------------------------
3V089B410   SIS_410   4 Mem Banks, REG_6A=FF
4V089B411   SIS_411   6 Mem Banks, REG_6A=FF
5V089B412   SIS_412   8 Mem Banks, REG_6A=FF
6
7V089B413   SIS_413   4 Mem Banks, REG_6A=00
8V089B414   SIS_414   6 Mem Banks, REG_6A=00
9V089B415   SIS_415   8 Mem Banks, REG_6A=00
10
11NOTE: The versions above are but a few samples of the
12      many ingenious multiplex schemes possible with
13      this chipset.  (Hint: try V089B410 first).

Is there any MR bios for 286 Suntac chipset?

Robin4 wrote on 2020-12-24, 13:42:

Is there any MR bios for 286 Suntac chipset?

As written in the other thread, try
Re: How about a MR-BIOS ROM file repository?
It seems to be a generic 286 Version.

I saw this picture of a motherboard and it struck me that it has both an AMI bios but also that there is a chip marked "MR BIOS" V303UT next to the keyboard connector.

what is that ?

that's a keyboard controller