HELP- cant upgrade mobo Bios !

KyUss

Can someone help - I m trying to upgrade the bios for my Jetway 663AS Ultra mobo.
VIA Apollo KT133A(VT8363A) System controller and VT82C686B PCI to ISA bridge

Ive been to jetway.com.tw and downloaded the awdflash.exe and all the .bin files.

when I use a startup disk and try to flash the bios, it doesnt seem to write to the bios properly ( red blocks come up to indicate that writing failed ) this seems worrying, but the bios just reboots as per before - theres no change.

I experience crashes with my setup often - too often. Anybody else have any problem with this board - got it from Dawn computers in Dublin

Gerry

You need to disable 'write protect for flash bios' or something similar in your bios setup.

KyUss

Thx Gerry - I was wondering if it could be something like that... I have previously flashed bios of a couple of other boards with no probs - so I could nt understand why this would nt go.

Anyway - I ll give it a go...

PS _ would you think that I must use a startup disk - or can you use MSDOS prompt under Windows .... whats the safest ?

Gerry

A startup disk is needed, so the machine is in a clean dos mode for flashing, with no unwanted programs in memory which could interfere with the flashing process. It won't let you flash under windows. I doubt if you would be too pleased if windows crashed during flashing, taking your bios with it.

KyUss

Indeed - my machine crashes a lot.. I just d/l'd the new VIA drivers and seems to help. It wouldnt do to have a crash while flashing in windows .....( sounds like fun if youre driving a car though ...)

Thanks , Ill bear this in mind.

BTW - wheres the best place to post if I need general tech help on ATHLON based system - I have ATHLON and SCSI based system which is rare enough and I d like to find out how to optimise it for max stability and speed - For example, I'd like to flash the bios of the SCSI card - (ADAPTEC 2940U2W v 2.00) The card originally came out of a Dell machine, but the Adaptec site advises that you should not flash OEM cards... and the Dell site seems to have nowt about flashing cards they provide. Would it make a great difference anyway ? I dont think SCSI is as fast as it could be.
Any tips ?

KyUss

Thx Creed -

Gerry

yup, f8 then shift+f5 works nicely for people with win9x. I have to use a bootdisk cos of win2k

The_Scary_Man

Instead of starting another thread I thought i'd stick my problem on to the end of this one. Yesterday I d/led the VIA 4in1 1.32 drivers after reading that it would help with problems I was having getting Severance:Blade of Darkness to run. I ran the exe file which brought up a registry error message and ever since Windows wont recognise my DVD-ROM or my CD-Writer. In the initial start up the BIOS picks them up but I can't access them in Windows (98 SE).
This is probably down to a really stupid mistake by me chancing my arm with things I really didn't have a clue about but I could really do with a hand.

My mobo is a Microstar MS-6156 ATX BX10
Intel 44oBX AGPset: 82443BX Host Bridge Controller.

Ta,

Scary

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And then in a moment of absolute clarity he realised that there was nothing, not because everything had ceased to exist but rather that it had never been there to begin with.
Free Your Mind.

Gerry

erm, you don't have a via chipset.

Intel 44oBX AGPset: 82443BX Host Bridge Controller.

So hardly surprising the via drivers won't work?

You don't need any drivers for the bx. Try new graphics card drivers.

To get your drives working again, go to device manager, and change the drivers for your ide/atapi controllers back to the standard microsoft ones. Alternatively just delete the controllers, and after a reboot windows should redetect them properly.

_CreeD_

KyUss, try http://www.viahardware.com, If you can't find what you need there it should link to somewhere you can.

_CreeD_

Press F8 at "Starting Windows 9x", then choose Safe Mode Command Prompt Only. No need for one of those antique floppy thingys..

Oh, and if you still can't flash it after Gerry's suggestion, find the hardware bios clear jumper/switch on the MBD and use it. Then try the flash again.

[This message has been edited by _CreeD_ (edited 15-08-2001).]

KyUss

I checked out the "write protect for flash bios" etc. but there is no such thing on my mobo.

Even so, after installing the newest VIA update it seems to have done some good, havent crashed since. the CPU temp after playing about 2 hours of Deus Ex is stable at about 50 c,system temp about 30c. So Im happy so far. But if anybody has any help on flashing the 663AS I d appreciate...

KyUss

SCARY MAN -

go back to www.msi.com.tw and download the files for the INTEL chipsets - that should sort you out.

The_Scary_Man

Ta KyUss, that did the trick

---

And then in a moment of absolute clarity he realised that there was nothing, not because everything had ceased to exist but rather that it had never been there to begin with.
Free Your Mind.