Urgent - Need Help!

[silentzero]

Hey guys!

I fried my last 1 Ghz Athlon, so I ordered a new one!

The Athlon Thunderbird 1.4 Ghz "AYHJA" 266 Mhz FSB

I've already asked about 4 people on IRC about this, and they've said it'd work - but I'm wondering if my ASUS mainboard will support it...

it's the
ASUS A7V133 VIA KT133A Socket A Chipset

I'm hoping it will work !

I've got the Coolmaster SK6, a mighty fine copper based heatsink.

Thanks for your help in advance!

[Sonny]

Your on the net so check the ASUS site if you need to flash your BIOS. I had to flash mine cause it originally only supported up to 1.2GHz.

[silentzero]

I checked the ASUS site - couldnt really find anything, but found out it supports Tbird chips.

I'm a newbie to the mainboard scene, so how do I flash a mainboard ?

thanks!

[Sonny]

HOLD ON!!! If you make a mistake in flashing your BIOS you can kill your system. I would suggest going to a computer shop & have them do it. If they kill your comp then they have to fix it. Watch them & learn. It's also in the manual:D

[silentzero]

hehe OK..

well i haven't got the chip yet, i just ordered it.

I just want to know if it will work with my mobo, and it should. Maybe I don't even need to flash it!

thanks!

-silentzero

[Sonny]

Yup! That's one headache I would avoid

[silentzero]

so do you guys think it will work ?

:D

[-=UR=- Ranger]

Originally posted by sonny
HOLD ON!!! If you make a mistake in flashing your BIOS you can kill your system. I would suggest going to a computer shop & have them do it. If they kill your comp then they have to fix it. Watch them & learn. It's also in the manual:D

Bios Flashing is not as dangerous as you say, I have done it a dozen times or so, and it never was Problem. The only thing I do is always clocking my CPU back to default values, just to be sure. And you shouldn´t exactly shut down your System while flashing:D

There´s some newbie guide on bios falshing available on this site, you might want to check it out..

[-=UR=- Ranger]

Originally posted by silentzero
so do you guys think it will work ?

:D

It should work, the KT133A supports 133 Mhz FSB and I believe a multiplier higher than 10 is also available...Perhaps you may need a Bios uprade...but don´t worry

[anarki_gr]

according to this (which can be found here (http://www.asus.com.tw/products/Motherboard/socketa/a7v133/index.html) ) :

"The VIA Apollo KT133A is based on an innovative and scalable architecture with proven reliability and performance. It is a two-chip set consisting of the VT8363A North Bridge controller and the VT82C686B South Bridge controller. Additional key features include support four USB ports, AGP Pro/4X, UltraDMA/100 and PC Health Monitoring.
Supports AMD® ThunderbirdTM / DuronTM 550MHz ~ 1GHz CPU. 3 x DIMM support for 1.5GB PC133/PC100/VCM133 SDRAM.
New PCI v2.2 and USB v1.1 standards Ultra DMA/100 and DMA/66 support
4 x PCI and 1 x PCI/AMR Up to 4 USB Ports max.
266/200MHz Front Side Bus Stepless Frequency Selection
PC Health Monitoring & Suspend to RAM Optional AC ' 97 Audio & RAID 0 or 1 Support"

your current bios supports tbirds up to 1GHz. maybe flashing it would be a good idea but only if you know what you're doing or else you might ruin your motherboard.

[silentzero]

allright - the CPU arrives today

...

wish me luck.

It seems like I need to upgrade the BIOS..

uhm, sounds silly - but how do I do this?
Is it like a normal driver upgrade? And if somebody could find the right ones for me - the ASUS site is confusing.

[.. AE 86 ..]

before u flash your bios, reboot and go into bios and select the optimized settings... this will decrease the probability of system freeze during the flash operation
my system froze up once when i was flashing the bios, the system went dead, and i had to replace the bios chip.. lucky there was still warranty

[silentzero]

Before I flash the BIOS,

What is the difference between the board update and the flashing utility?

[Sonny]

Before you flash your bios it is adviced by VIA that you uninstall the 4in1 drivers & get into DOS from a cold boot. If your still not sure how to flash find a friend that does & RTFM.

[-=UR=- Ranger]

Set your CPU at default values, than boot into Dos by boot disk, or just restart in Dos Mode, then start the Flash Program, tell it where to find the Bios update on your Hdd an that´s it. The flash program might ask you if you want to backup you former bios. Do that! And if something goes wrong, but your system does not hang, DON´T SHUT IT DOWN !!!. Try to reflash. When shutting down, and you have Errors in your Bios, you have to replace the Chip.
I got another Bios chip from a burnt out Mobo for that case:D

[Sonny]

-=UR=- Ranger - You sure it's safe to restart into DOS for a BIOS flash?!?!?! A little too risky for me. Why not save the BIOS on the floppy with the flash utility?

[silentzero]

uh guys -

I'm still unsure about this !

If the chip only goes up to 1 Ghz and I want it to go to 1.4 Ghz (because it is afterall a 1.4 ghz cpu), then i need to upgrade the bios.

What is the difference between flashing and upgrading the BIOS/mainboard?

[Sonny]

LOL! Kinda got a little off track there. What does the manual have on upgrading/flashing the BIOS?

Flashing - short for using the Flash Utility to Upgrade the B.ASIC I.NPUT & O.UTPUT S.YSTEM

There you go! It's really one of those RTFMs that you have to do.

[!-=sky=-!]

i can tell you that the manual doesnt provide much info about this.....anyways....the way i do my bios flashes are reboot into dos from windows, then i go to the dir i put everything in, awdflash, backup bios, select flash bios, type in file name, skip the other backup since u did one earlier, press Y to program

just watch everything and if it's sucessful then reset but if you got errors u should NEVER reset your computer, when it asks you to reprogram or not press Y...if you stil get errors then flash the BACKUP BIOS FILE that you backed up earlier