Bios Upgrade

MindPhuck

Hey Lads,

I really need some help out on this one, my heads totally wrecked. This is for Blasters PC (for those of you who remember him). Basicly, I have a 40 gig drive and I cant get the pc to see it properly. With some jumper changes, I can get windows 2k to see it, but will only see it as an 8gig drive.

From reading all the trouble shooting guides, it appears I need a bios upgrade. I cannot find the right bios upgrade for this, so its a bit of a witchhunt. So here are the details -

BIOS Manufacturer : Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
BIOS ID : 01/28/1999-i440BX-W977TF-2A69KJ1CC-00
BIOS Date : 01/28/99
BIOS OEM Signon : V.7BXAN_2 C01 01-28-1999
Chipset : Intel 440BX/ZX rev 3
Super I/O Chip : Winbond 83977EF found at port 370h

Seriously lads, big time kudos if you can help me on this one!

Thanks
Eric

SickBoy

Hey Eric,

Not sure if this will help but it might be a start. I had a search and found a guy with a similar problem to yours. He gave almost, if not the same BIOS information. Have a look.
The bios he updated to can be found here.
Hope this helps.

Jimmy...

MindPhuck

Deadly Jimmy.

At least that gives me what proggie to use. part 1 done.

Im just worried/wondering what bios file to use now..???

Eric

SickBoy

BXAS2D01.BIN ?

MindPhuck

Thanks Jimmy,

Yeah, I tried them, but w2k still only sees it as 8gig.. any other ideas ?


Eric

Occidental

Can you get details of the system board manufacturer and model, as I've often had more luck getting working BIOS upgrades by going this route.

MindPhuck

sure... any suggestions as to tools to obtain the board manu. Everything ive tried says its a intel i440BX, but it looks doubtfull if it is..

phaxx

Moved to tech.

Something like Sisoft's Sandra will tell you the make and model of the motherboard. (and everything else, for that matter)

I know maxtor have a utility that you can install and it'll allow the entire drive to be seen on older machines like this, but I doubt it works on non maxtor drives. The other manufacturers should have similar utilities, have a look on the relevant site for one.

kmb

if you fdisk in another computer ie modern bios system then it should read as 40 gig because i have found this problem before with a packard bell 166mx which was max 2gig fdisk and when i put in 14 gig into it it read as 14 gig.....older computers max was 2gig..then 8 gig..then 32 gig max...and so on.have you tried this fdisk on modern bios?

Occidental

Just to Phaxx's comments, you'll also find the board details marked on the physical board.

kmb

http://www.wimsbios.com/
2A69K Intel 440BX/ZX chipset (Pentium II/III based chipset)
J1 Jetway (Jetboard, Acorp)

Gerry

The board has the i440BX chipset, it definitely is the same board that yer man has in the link sickboy posted.

Try the newer bios http://210.201.178.73/bios/9bxan/9bxasa13.BIN

Read that thread, he mentions that it gave a warning about the part number not matching the system... dunno if it will do the same for you.

If that still doesn't work, you could probably pick up a pci ide controller for 30 euro, don't use drive translation software as it will be terribly slow.

MindPhuck

Thanks lads.

Gerry, Im gonna try that today. Yeah, I got the same message as he did, but it made no difference

MindPhuck

hmm..

I tried that .bin file Gerry, but it gave me the message -

'the program files part number does not match your system' and then quit out


wah wah. Any other suggestions... sorry to be a pain, im really stuck on this one

rob1891

Use the /F switch to the awdflash program, that will skip whatever version checking it does and write the bin file.

MindPhuck

heh, I give up!

Tar for that Rob1891. So off i goes to try that and then I get.. 'file size does not match'..

Like please.. gimme a break here