OK - I killed the bios on the KK266...

[Yomama]

...but I still love the board and the company because of the by comparison outstanding customer service.

First off I was putting the board through a lot of punishment running at 156 MHz and using the inofficial TurKOC bios, which really improves performace by about another 10%. I thought this bios was safe, but I realized that some of the multipliers did not work right. And when I tried repeatedly to go over 156MHz while tweaking vio, to possibly squeeze a few more MHz out of the crucial, at some point the board did not want to boot anymore. Restting the bios worked once, but the next time around it did not work anymore - annoying, but hey I am close to some limits here, and playing with vio may have killed the bios chip.

Anyhow, when I called Iwill I had to push a little, since they were suggesting that also my CPU may be dead ( - I hope not...), but then when I got to the RMA department and requested a new chip, they offered to send it priority #)

Now here is my question: Once I receive my new bios chip, is there a way to boot with it, extract it, and then insert the erased chip and reflash it? That way I would have a spare - just in case. I remember reading a description once, but it was a while ago.

Thanks

Yo

 

[DaveB]

Absolutely. It's called a hot-swap.

 

[el]

NO WAY! Does that really work and is that really safe? sounds like fun!

I hope your CPU isn't dead. what were your temps at a 156fsb?

 

[Metaxas]

Well, I say that Iwill's tech support is ****. Man, the crack head wanted to argue about 200FSB cpu's versus 266FSB cpu's...but hell, they are both the same thing, just with different multpliers. Anyways, I've had trouble with iwill since day ONE. Look at sig, mobo #2 is on its way, and man I hope my cpu isn't dead, shouldn't be though, never got hot, or anything, I think it may just be a bad board, were going to find out. With watercooling too.

 

[Yomama]

el (Feb 28, 2001 11:29 p.m.):
NO WAY! Does that really work and is that really safe? sounds like fun!

I hope your CPU isn't dead. what were your temps at a 156fsb?

I am using the PAL6035 with arctic silver. Temps were averaging 43 or 44C under SETI load @1335. Very unlikely the chip is dead, but I'll see soon...

Yo

 

[Yomama]

Metaxas (Mar 01, 2001 12:13 a.m.):
Well, I say that Iwill's tech support is ****. Man, the crack head wanted to argue about 200FSB cpu's versus 266FSB cpu's...but hell, they are both the same thing, just with different multpliers. Anyways, I've had trouble with iwill since day ONE. Look at sig, mobo #2 is on its way, and man I hope my cpu isn't dead, shouldn't be though, never got hot, or anything, I think it may just be a bad board, were going to find out. With watercooling too.

You must be the one on drugs at least according to your handle #).

I have learnt not to argue with CS people. When I call have a story that holds, and does not offer any opeings for arguments.

Have you dealt with the other mobo customer services? I have , and let me tell you ASUS is 0, as in nonexistent, and ABit is also very hard to reach, and very unwilling to do anything.

Again, by comparison Iwill is great.

Yo

 

[Yomama]

DaveB (Feb 28, 2001 11:10 p.m.):
Absolutely. It's called a hot-swap.

Thank you for the response. As for the procedure, can you confirm my thoughts below?

I would boot to a dos disk with the bios on it, then swap the chips, and then flash the chip. Is that it?

Thanks again

Yo

 

[DaveB]

You got it. Works everytime when you're using the exact same BIOS. Just be careful prying the BIOS chip out. Since you will have already replaced the bad chip, it shouldn't be a problem for you. See if you can borrow an extraction tool from a local shop if you don't have something else you can use laying around. And set the System BIOS cacheable option in the BIOS to enabled prior to making the switch.

BTW, regarding Asus. You're right about them. Dunno what everybody sees in them. They have, without a doubt, the worst Tech Support on the planet. Basically, they don't answer anybody. Plus, just read any forum and you'd have agree their BIOS support stinks also. Asus owners are always flashing back and forth between different BIOS revs because new ones always seem to fix one problem, while creating several more. Generating numerous BIOS updates suggests poor design, which they're trying to compensate for with BIOS tweaking.

 

[Yomama]

Thank you for the information Dave,

in fact the KK266 bios chip is one of the new square 4MB chips that has contacts on all four sides. Most tools I saw have metal contacts - not good under power. I may insert a string under the chip, so that I can pull it out without touching the contacts.

Yo

 

[DaveB]

Oh yeah, I've got one of those square jobs on my MSI K7T board. Never messed with one of them. Maybe some nylon fishing line might be better than regular string. Or a fibre optic strand. I dunno.

Good luck.

 

[Yomama]

DaveB (Mar 01, 2001 03:01 p.m.):
Oh yeah, I've got one of those square jobs on my MSI K7T board. Never messed with one of them. Maybe some nylon fishing line might be better than regular string. Or a fibre optic strand. I dunno.

Good luck.

I am actually thinking about attaching a small zip tie across one of the diagonals... Should be a cool action to pull it out like that