bios swaps, trickery with bios chips

i was reading on the forums about someone who had a asus p2b using the bios for my mobo the asus p3b-f. i forget why he used this teqnique, but it poses interesting possibilities for me. anyone got any ideas as to what bios from a newer but similarly featured asus board bios switch for my board. i am looking for faster fsb speeds, and possibly a multiplier change even given the intel locked cpu buisiness.

if not, anyone have any ideas on an asus board that is newer,cheap, and has at least 5 pci, 1 agp, 3 or 4 memory slots, and supports the pentium III 800E coppermine? it has to be a slot 1 board or something compatible with that type of chip.

either way, i am still hunting for performance. i have one more question... what would happen if i put an award bios chip in my computer that came from an old 450mhz amd athlon board? i have already removed the chip, but have done nothing with it. it is a perfect match to the award chip already in my machine. i figure the best it would do is crash, anybody out there KNOW what would happen?

thanks wisdom.

A new BIOS would not change the multiplier. The Multiplier is locked on the chip. I had a BIOS that would let me change it, though I can guarantee you it did not change the chips speed.

multiplier tricks

AntmanMike said:

A new BIOS would not change the multiplier. The Multiplier is locked on the chip. I had a BIOS that would let me change it, though I can guarantee you it did not change the chips speed.

Click to expand...

i have known for some time that you cant change the multiplier on my chip, intel locks them on die thus making it nearly impossible to get around it. i was aiming more towards a more flexible bios that would give me better control of FSB speeds and such. chances are a bios that allows multi's change will allow you to increase the FSB in 1 mhz increments while maintaining the stability of the pci clock multiplier. sometimes i just don't go into enough detail to get my true point across.

it seems none of you noticed that the other bios chip i have is for an AMD board, i have an old asus bx intel board. i wondered what would happen if i put that AMD award chip in and booted her up. i think the only person who got that point said that it would likely boot for about 2 seconds and shut down. anybody out there willing to prove him wrong?


thanks folks, wisdom.

Bios 1008 beta 004 is the best your going to do for that board. There are no new MB bios's that backwards compatible to a P3B-F.

The AMD award bios chip you have has absolutely no chance of booting on the P2B. I highly doubt even the P3B-f bios will work, but its worth a try.

Here is what I would do to try the P3B-f bios.

1. Make sure you can get the bios chip out easily.

2. Boot your computer to a DOS prompt with the origional bios chip.

3. Very carefully swapp the bios chips with power on.

4. Flash the bios to the P2B bios so you now have a clone of the origional bios chip.

5. Try out the new P2B flashed bios to see if the board will boot.

6. Next flash the P3B-f bios and see what happens.

If you cant flash because the flash program gives you a checksum error try using the /f switch. Let say your using awardflash.exe to flash the bios and your rom file is P3b.bin. Normally you type awardflash P3B.bin but using the /f switch type awardflash P3B.bin /f. This will force the flashing process even if the checksum doesnt match.

you should read things a little more closely

i dont know what gave you the idea that i have a p2b, perhaps the fact that i discussed someone else using my p3b-f bios on a p2b. that's right, i have an asus P3B-F. your suggestions are pretty clever, but could cause one to fry a board. be carefull what you tell others to try.

thanks anyway, wisdom.

Re: you should read things a little more closely

infinitwisdom said:

i dont know what gave you the idea that i have a p2b, perhaps the fact that i discussed someone else using my p3b-f bios on a p2b. that's right, i have an asus P3B-F. your suggestions are pretty clever, but could cause one to fry a board. be carefull what you tell others to try.

thanks anyway, wisdom.

Click to expand...

I see what your trying to do now. I highly doubt you will be able to find another bios that will be compatilble with your board. You can however try something like modbin or CBROM to tweak the bios file and then reaflash it. Check out www.biosmods.com for all sorts of interesting info.

FYI I have done the hot swap bios thing I mensioned above. It works like a charm.

Asus scrambled the BIOS, so nothing can edit it