Looking for Vendor of Phoenix Bios/Upgrade
JAMES DORCEY
system and I'm looking for a mail-order vendor for Phoenix Bios.
JD
Rich Wales
I'd recommend SmartMicro Technologies in Westlake Village, CA (near
Thousand Oaks; northwest of Los Angeles). (800) 422-9979. They carry
Phoenix, AMI, AWARD, and MR (Microid Research) BIOSes.
I just upgraded my 386 to MR BIOS and bought the new BIOS from Smart-
Micro for $70. I spoke at some length to one of SmartMicro's technical
people and was impressed by his knowledgeability and honesty. I think
the company is worth supporting.
For that matter, I would also suggest people consider MR BIOS for their
next upgrade. I have used MR BIOS for about a year (on two machines)
and have been very pleased. Call Microid Research (in Silicon Valley)
at (408) 395-4096 and have a chat with Mike Meisner for more info.
Meisner, by the way, was the one who recommended SmartMicro to me when
I asked him for a source for MR BIOS.
--
Rich Wales <wa...@CS.UCLA.EDU> // UCLA Computer Science Department
3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, CA 90024-1596 // +1 (310) 825-5683
forrest.e.gehrke
>James Dorcey asked for a mail-order vendor for Phoenix BIOS.
>
>I'd recommend SmartMicro Technologies in Westlake Village, CA (near
>Thousand Oaks; northwest of Los Angeles). (800) 422-9979. They carry
>Phoenix, AMI, AWARD, and MR (Microid Research) BIOSes.
>
>I just upgraded my 386 to MR BIOS and bought the new BIOS from Smart-
>Micro for $70. I spoke at some length to one of SmartMicro's technical
>people and was impressed by his knowledgeability and honesty. I think
>the company is worth supporting.
>
>For that matter, I would also suggest people consider MR BIOS for their
>next upgrade. I have used MR BIOS for about a year (on two machines)
>and have been very pleased. Call Microid Research (in Silicon Valley)
>at (408) 395-4096 and have a chat with Mike Meisner for more info.
>Meisner, by the way, was the one who recommended SmartMicro to me when
>I asked him for a source for MR BIOS.
But is this not specific to a particular motherboard? It is my
impression that one cannot simply plug in any BIOS chip, but
that it must have been tailored to the particular motherboard.
For example, a few months ago I talked to Meisner and he told
me that my PC, which has a Micronics motherboard, was not
able to use any of his chips as Micronics had refused to give
him the necessary specific design information.
Forrest Gehrke f...@dodger.att.com
Rich Wales
But is this not specific to a particular motherboard?
It is my impression that one cannot simply plug in any
BIOS chip, but that it must have been tailored to the
particular motherboard.
This is quite true, and it was not my intention to imply otherwise.
In order to get a BIOS for a 386 or 486 system, you need to take into
account the motherboard's "chip set" -- the extra IC's other than the
processor which serve to interface the processor to the motherboard.
At the chip set level, different 386/486 boards look different. One of
the goals of the BIOS is to hide these differences so that the board
will conform to the expected standards at the BIOS interrupt call level.
Hence, different motherboards, with different chip sets, require differ-
ent BIOSes.
Before I bought the specific version of MR BIOS that would be right for
my particular motherboard, I spoke with both a person at SmartMicro
Technologies (the company I bought from) and Mike Meisner at Microid
Research (maker of MR BIOS) and described my motherboard's chip set and
features to them. Meisner had me try an experiment to see the interac-
tion of the front panel "turbo" LED and the reset button. In the end,
he came up with a specific BIOS version that would be suitable for my
system.
If the company which made my motherboard had already gone through this
process, I could have either gotten the right BIOS directly from them,
or else I could probably have found out from them which version to get
from someone else. However, in my case, the motherboard company hadn't
done business with Microid Research, so they didn't have the info.
For example, a few months ago I talked to Meisner and he
told me that my PC, which has a Micronics motherboard, was
not able to use any of his chips as Micronics had refused
to give him the necessary specific design information.
Quite believable. If a motherboard manufacturer chooses to keep the
details of its chip set secret, then a BIOS manufacturer is out of luck.
Micronics obviously has agreed to share this info (presumably for a
price) with one or more of the major BIOS makers (AMI, Phoenix, Award);
otherwise, no one would be able to use their boards.
Andreas Wierse
>
>I'd recommend SmartMicro Technologies in Westlake Village, CA (near
... [stuff deleted]
today I received my new seagate harddisk st3144a (IDE) and in its
installation guide I found that bios problems can or will arise with
my bios version: 151089 AMI (don't laugh :-)
it needs (at least they say so) 4/9/90.
Isn't there a cheap way (like ftp somewhere) to get access to
the bios-data and burn the proms on my own?
I don't need the hottest bios version, so that would be fine
Andreas Wierse
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