All your questions about the ABIT BE6-II / BE6-II V1.2 / BE6-II V2.0 should be answered in the following thread (read it from the first to the last post) -> Abit VT6X4 MoBo vs. Abit BE6-II.

The latest HPT370 BIOS has to be modded into the ABIT BE6-II V1.2 BIOS 71.

If there are still any questions, you're welcome!

kind regards
soggi

Thank you soggi.
Actually I found some other informations scattered around:
There is a modified bios for the rev2 which has the 137gb hard drive limit removed and a version based v2.0 but with the raid bios updated.

For v1.2 on retroweb there is a version with latest htp370 bios (2.351) and apparently with 137gb hard drive limit removed.
For v2.0 there is a file called ber72RAID_234, which integrates the latest bios with htp370 bios version 2.34.

OK, so you found everything you wanted!? 😀

kind regards
soggi

The question made me curious, but from reading through the thread that soggi linked, I'm still not sure I know the difference between rev1.2 and rev2.0.
I did see it mentioned that v1.2 is non-RAID, and v2.0 has the RAID feature. That would explain why they have a different BIOS. But is that the only difference?
Otherwise it seems they're exactly the same, using the same HPT370 chip and no other clear hardware differences that I've seen mentioned.

Possible difference:
I looked at an old capture of the ABit site and they had a separate listing for rev2.0 which gave a different advertised max CPU speed (1GHz vs 800MHz). But the "non 2.0" BE6-II page (which says 800MHz) doesn't distinguish between each of the rev1.x versions - so it's not clear whether the 1GHz spec also applied to rev1.2. I suspect the CPU circuitry is the same between v1.2 and v2.0, but the only version I have is a rev2.0, so I can't compare them.

In the thread I've linked you can see in post #2 that I've linked to ABIT BP6-II and BP6-II V2.0 but not BP6-II V1.2 - ABIT had pages for the former two, but not for the latter (V1.2). In the BIOS changelogs you can see that both versions (V1.2 and V2.0) support the same CPUs (f.e. PIII/Celeron up to 1.1 GHz), just the HighPoint HPT370 BIOS version seems to be different.

At the moment I can't tell you what ABIT's intention was back then...maybe there's some other difference. I don't have these boards (to have a look at them), I only own an ABIT BE6.

kind regards
soggi

Best guess (without looking), one of the lba barriers was patched with the later highpoint bios.

It should be fairly simple with cbrom or awardmod to replace the highpoint bios.

In my opinion the difference between v1.2 and 2 are just cosmetical, highpoints ide ports (orange or something like blue instead of white), sticker on the hpt controller and probably have a ver 2 (of a 2 motherboard) was more appealing?
I tried the bios for the v2 on my 1.2, it seems to work fine but I don't like the modification the guy did and the hpt bios seems a bit sluggish. Is there a way to modify the text of a single bios option with award? I'm aware there is for ami.

Modify what text?
Awardmod might be what you want

On the modded bios for revision 2 the raid controller is identified like so in the advanced peripheral, like: ata100 raid controller, same goes in the boot priority, while in the modded bios for the rev 1.2 is identified as future ide something.
I' m not sure if it's the right program, here is the difference:

What's under pci drivers?
That's where I'd expect the HP boot rom to be.

There is a pci driver[a], but I'm looking to change the text string on that bios voice, apparently I can't do it with this progam.
I've tried several modbin versions but when I load the bios it always crashes with header sum error.

Scroll across to the strings table

Oh. it doesn't exist.
Which one do you have open?
I have 02/08/2001-I440BX-W977-6A69KA19C-XU
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/abit-ab-be6-ii#bios

Which says UltraDMA-66 IDE Controller

myne wrote on 2024-10-16, 11:42:

Scroll across to the strings table […]
Show full quote

Scroll across to the strings table

Oh. it doesn't exist.
Which one do you have open?
I have 02/08/2001-I440BX-W977-6A69KA19C-XU

Which says UltraDMA-66 IDE Controller

I think this tool is not really compatible with such old bios format.
I attached the bios.

Modbin in freedos (x86box) worked
http://xdel.ru/downloads/bios-mods.com-tools/ … in6v2.01.01.EXE

Open the below with the changed text:

Thank you it works like a charme!

Please can someone with Abit BE6-II measure value or read/take a photo of R77 just below the northbridge (side towards AGP, pin AD4-SUSTAT#)?
OK, from intel ref. sch. it seems to be 10k pull up to VCC3...