[H-GEN] can't get past "Award BootBlock Bios v1.0"

[Hilton Travis]

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Hi Tony,

On Sun, 2002-06-30 at 20:27, Tony Nugent wrote:
> It seems that I'm stuck here...
> 
> =========8<------- cut ----------------
> Award BootBlock Bios v1.0
> Copyright (c) 1995, Award Software, Inc.
> 
> BIOS ROM checksum error
> 
> Detecting floppy drive A media...
> INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER
> =========8<------- cut ----------------
> 
> (it does not recognise any disk I put into it).

Well, you need to make a specific disk for it to get past here.

> If you have ever seen this error message and you know what to do
> about it, then please read on as I need your help...
> 
> Hardware:
> 	ASUS TXP4 motherboard with Award BIOS, P200mmx processor
> 	48Mb 72pin (not faulty)

Need to have a fully working BIOS downloaded and extracted.  Also, if
you have a socketed BIOS, I can do a "live chip swap and flash" job and
get you up and running.

> Until now, this box had been running reliably for about four years.
> I have the original m'board manual and cdrom.  I have checked
> www.asus.com.tw, and also google (which proved to be most useful).
> 
> Senario:
> 
> - opened up the case to put a 6Gb hard drive into it (as secondary
>   ide master).  It went in with no problems.

as normally happens.

> - turned on the machine, got:
>   - one long and three short beeps, a short pause, then a lower
>     daa-daa beep.

BEEEEEEEEP BIP BIP BIP = dead video stuff, normally - like a missing
video card.  Lower DAAAAA DAAAAA beeps mean dead BIOS, normally.

>   - corrupted greenish blinking reverse-lit pattern on the screen
>     which went blank if I hit reset.

Corrupted Video RAM, normally.

> - the bios bootup error beeps are not mentioned in the manual
>   (typical, eh?)  Info on the web says that one long and three short
>   beeps indicates a video problem, so I replaced the video card
>   (pci, no agp slot).

Best to use an old ISA card until the system works again.  Quite often
PCI/AGP is not running at this point, but ISA works fine.

> - turn on the machine again, this time I get the above message
>   saying that it wants to boot from a floppy.  Note that this
>   happens very quickly (right after the video bios init), and normal
>   bios bootup does not occur.

Yup - this is bootstrap stuff.  You need to have a MessyDog 6.22
formatted floppy with JUST an autoexec.bat command that runs the flash
program with the new BIOS file as a parameter.  It MUST flash without
asking for user input - so look up the destructions for the flash
program you want to use.  I cannot remember these switches any more - it
seems I'm getting too old or some such...

> - put an m$dog/w98 boot disk into the drive, press enter, the floppy
>   spins momentarily, followed by the low daa-daa beep, then a repeat
>   of the "INSERT SYSTEM DISK" message.  Nor does it work directly
>   from a reset or reboot.  (Nor with linux lilo/kernel boot
>   sectors:)

Correct - must be a disk that will run the flash code.

> - further web browsing revealed that the bios checksum error could
>   be due to a date mismatch, so I reset the CMOS by crossing the
>   approproate jumper -- but that had no affect.  (I also now have
>   the BIOS flash protection jumper off).

Won't work.  The BIOS has been fragged.  What you have done is to reset
the NVRAM (CMOS) data, which will do nothing for a fscked BIOS chip.

> - I have stripped the m'board down to nothing and rebuilt it twice
>   now (checking different components), each time with the same lack
>   of success.  However, the original video card (back in the same
>   slot) is now working ok again (go figure:)

Once it gets to this stage, it needs surgical work - no tablets/salves
will work.  Needs to be an invasive procedure.  :)

> Obviously the bios needs to be re-burned to get much further with it.

Yup

> However, everything on the web says that at this point I should be
> able to boot a floppy into dos and then run a flash utility to burn
> a new rom image into it.  I have it all ready to go (boot disk with
> flash utils and lastest rom image etc) but it just won't eat any
> floppies that I feed it.  (The floppy boots ok on other computers).

Must auto-run the flash prog, as I said above.  Bit of a cnut of a thing
to work out how to do as most BIOS readme's are as useless as Microsoft
Security manuals.

> Can anyone offer any suggestions?  Or is this box pretty much a lost
> cause?

If you cannot get it up (so to speak), lemme know, and if you can get it
here, I can probably get it working for you.

>   Weird problem, I have no idea what caused this.  It isn't mine
>   (which makes it worse since it was apparently ok before I touched
>   it), but I've had hardware in and out of this box before with no
>   issues.  Either the eeprom has "faded" over time, I've
>   inadertently done something to zap it, or (as one web page
>   suggested) it has been hit by the Chernobyl virus (which is
>   possible considering what it has been recently exposed to).

Its a "shit happens" problem.  I have not seen anything like this for a
while (excluding Tony Bilbrough's system recently that he managed to
comprehensively fsck (hi Tony).  :)  Used to see it a fair bit years ago
when I was dealing with hardware a lot more regularly.

If it was CIH or another virus that writes to the BIOS, and if you have
a socketed BIOS, then its easy to fix.

If people didn't bitch and moan, and were happy to manually move a
jumper to flash, then back to boot properly, CIH would never have
existed.  But customers being customers, now we have viruses that can
flash BIOSes with relative ease.

> Thanks.
> 
> Cheers
> Tony

So, what is it with Tony's and dead BIOSes this month?  :)

-- 

Regards,

Hilton Travis			Email: Hilton at QuarkAV.com
Manager				Phone: +61-(0)7-3343-3889
Quark AudioVisual		Phone: +61-(0)419-792-394
Quark Computers
(Brisbane, Australia)		http://www.QuarkAV.com/

Network Administration, SmoothWall Firewalls, NOD32 AntiVirus
 Conference and Seminar AudioVisual Production and Recording


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