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How can I repair an erased BIOS?
Hi,
I have bought a used PE1950 over the Ebay.
The machine has a custom BIOS, which I tried to update to 2.7.0 under DOS, but not worked.
I have found a forum message, try to use the -forcetype command line switch.
No problem, do it.
The updater correctly erase the flash(!), wrote anything to it, verify and the said: Press any key to reboot.
I have pressed.
Since then the machine display on the dignostic display: E1410 System failure, and the coolers periodically spin up then down.
Maybe some watchdog circuit reset the machine periodically.
Do I have any chance to repair the BIOS, or throw away the motherboard?
Thanks
Zoltan
theflash1932
9 Legend
9 Legend
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16.3K Posts
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June 5th, 2012 11:00
Probably throw it away at this point. You can try clearing the NVRAM using the jumpers on the motherboard, but if that doesn't work, and you can't get back to a point where you can try reflashing the BIOS, then the board is useless. The post you found that in most likely also had some warning that unsupported flashing could "brick" (ruin) the board.
skylarking
2 Intern
2 Intern
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548 Posts
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June 5th, 2012 20:00
I've had a Gigabyte motherboard fail a BIOS flash which gave a black screen after the reboot. At this point there was no ability to run any OS thus no ability to re-flash the BIOS to fix the problem.
In general, any motherboard can be recovered from such mishaps. You need to remove the BIOS chip from the motherboard either by removing the chip from its socket or de-soldering it from the board itself. One can then place the removed BIOS chip in an appropriate flash programer for re-programing with the appropriate BIOS binary image. Unfortunately if you don't have access to such equipment (de-soldering station and flash programer), it can become an expensive exercise to pay someone else to perform this if indeed you can find someone to do it at all.
In my case, it was much cheaper to buy another Gigabyte motherboard and it saved me time, money and grief. So as 'theflash' says, 'probably throw it away at this point' is good advice. You should be able to find cheap gen 3 motherboards for a couple of hundred bucks (version 1 & 2 are cheaper).