When you flash BIOS in an old (4 years) Gigabyte GA-6BA mainboard: Flast boot block!
Jochen Schütze
this is a little experience report which I'm providing because it had
helped me save time and hassle if I had found this information
anywhere (using google...):
I've got an approximately four years old GA-6BA mainboard (which runs
still fine!). In order to install and use Windows 2000, I found myself
forced to update (flash) the BIOS. Got the necessary files and
software from Gigabyte's web server -- no problem. (Well, the package
I downloaded contained the flasher, the BIOS image ["6ba.f1"] and a
little "autoexec.bat" file which didn't contain the call to the
flasher software I got, but that's easy to fix with an editor.)
In Windows 95 in DOS mode (not a DOS box, but really only the pure
basic DOS layer of Windows), I ran the flasher program interactively,
and everything seemed to work fine -- after a few minutes, the
flashing was complete. But after restarting the computer, NOTHING
happend -- nothing on the screen (not even when I replaced the AGP
graphics board by an old ET4000 ISA board) and NO beep.
What happened: Anxiously not to lock the emergency door, I chose to
NOT flash the boot-block. That was WRONG, because the old (approx.
four years) BIOS in my GA-6BA did obviously not yet have any such
boot-block which would have rescued me. I tried of course to use the
boot-block, but nothing happened -- not Floppy disk access at all.
So I packed the BIOS chip and sent it to Arthur: www.flashbios.org
(in...@flashbios.org). He "repaired" (re-flashed) the BIOS chip, sent
it back (great, fast, and reliable service at very low price -- thanks
a lot to him!), and now the computer runs fine again -- even with
Windows 2000..:-)
If you feel you want to comment on this to me, please send a copy to
my personal E-mail address, because I don't follow this group. Just
wanted to share information which I'd have found helpful myself...
Jochen