Motherboard bios fubar'd?

carlazai

carlazai

carlazai

Soldato
Joined
16 Feb 2007
Posts
2,617
Quick background: moved house and the computer case was damaged in transit. Turned on PC to be greeted with black screen and no boot. LCD boot monitor not much use.

Thought gfx card was broke but had suspicions of the MB (Abit IP-35 pro xe). Tried gfx at neighbours but wouldn't work but judging the PSU in his i think it would have struggled to power a x1900 let alone a 5850 so wasn't 100% convinced it was gfx. I had tried clearing cmos with jumpers but nothing changed.

Tonight: Couldn't sleep and landed up reading general. Someone had similar problem which was solved by clearing cmos.

I tried the same with jumpers but no luck. Tried taking out the battery and shorting the jumpers. Turned and the beast worked :) Went into bios to change settings. After exiting the same black screen returns. This makes me think the bios is corrupted so i think to flash it but no matter what i do there is nothing i can do to flash the bios with a USB drive as i cant get the bios to hold any settings.

Is it worth disturbing neighbour to get a floppy drive in the morning or is it likely the actual memory chip is dead?
 
It's unlucky that the BIOS chip is dead but I have seen it happen, I could not write to the chip even when using an EEPROM programmer. After a replacement chip my device worked perfectly... This was a DSP however, not a PC but the principal is the same.

If you don't own an EEPROM/flash programmer then it may be worth trying to hotflash the BIOS, it sounds risky but I've done it over 10 times now and have had no issues so far touch wood...
 
Thanks for the advice, seems to be what i was thinking as well. I can use the PC as long as i never restart so in the short term there is my solution. In the mean time i will try hot flashing it and if that fails a trip to the MM is in order.
 
carlazai said:
Thanks for the advice, seems to be what i was thinking as well. I can use the PC as long as i never restart so in the short term there is my solution. In the mean time i will try hot flashing it and if that fails a trip to the MM is in order.
Click to expand...

As freddie mentioned above, it may be worth throwing a new CMOS battery in there just to see if it does change things, but if not it may be worth removing the CMOS battery altogether, this way your CMOS is cleared everytime you turn the machine off which will give you a usable machine at least...
 
Mike that is very clever and it worked. But looks like the gfx card is corrupting so i guess the Dutch post (RM delivered it perfectly to Amsterdam) really did a number on my computer, luckily i coughed but the extra 5e for insurance. Hopefully between RMA's and insurance i will come out in profit.
 
carlazai said:
Mike that is very clever and it worked. But looks like the gfx card is corrupting so i guess the Dutch post (RM delivered it perfectly to Amsterdam) really did a number on my computer, luckily i coughed but the extra 5e for insurance. Hopefully between RMA's and insurance i will come out in profit.
Click to expand...
No problem...

BIOS and CMOS issues can be a real pain but I'm glad your BIOS chip is ok at least. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom