croy wrote:

snip


What a treat to get a message from someone who is/was
actually in the thick of it.

After having worked in that arena, do you have a brand of
boards that you prefer?

This information, comes from a few interviews the enthusiast
sites have done with the major motherboard makers. In one
case, they gave a breakdown on the development process.
In another, there was a short video, showing how a motherboard
is tested at the factory. It's quite illuminating. It must
take hundreds and hundreds of employees to test millions of
motherboards per month. The testing is by hand, which is the
amazing part (test person inserted stuff in motherboard, and the
test lasts around 2 minutes).

I'm a digital designer, but I've designed communications
equipment. The difference is, the products I worked on,
cost $100,000 each, and we sell very few of them. But I
go through the same development process, as a motherboard
does. My final "spin" has to be cut and strap free too. My
initial prototype quantities vary from five to about thirty.
(Those are for testing in the lab.) But it's the same
style of development as with motherboards. And about
the same level of complexity.

How motherboard design differs from what I've done, is
a motherboard designer first and foremost, has to be
a "historian". You have to be aware of design decisions
made twenty years ago. And preserve compatibility. Whereas
for the things I've designed, they're largely constraint-free.



The information on the wimsbios page would be volunteered by
owners of the motherboard. Anything is possible with regard to
the authenticity of the information.


Understood.


I ran Q-Flash, just to back up the current BIOS, hoping that
it would suggest a filename that would include the revision,
but it only offered me a place to type in a filename. When
I un-lha'd it, the name was "m55ps3g.BIN"

So now, I'm stuck with a questionable board revision,
apparently running a "FA" BIOS revision.

But the board is working again, so I think I'll just crawl
back under my rock, and wait to come out until it *isn't*
working. Then, when I get a new board in hand, I'll play
around with this one until I either get a fresh BIOS rev on
it, or have it smoking and curling on the edges!

Thanks for your insights!


If you use awdsplit, lha, and strings.exe, you can dump a lot
of stuff in the BIOS into a text file for examination. You
should be able to see the BIOS string that way. For AMI BIOS,
you have to find a copy of mmtool for those. Award, you use
awdsplit.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.c...c?dmode=source

Paul