I can report some progress. I ordered a new BIOS chip from some Ebay
advertiser, and while wating for it to arrive I tried an experiment. Having
extracted the BIOS chips from both boards with ease using a couple of
toothpick-like ponted woodens sticks so as not to damage anything, I swapped
them over.
I now had the BIOS chip from the newer board in the older one, and vice
versa. And the old board, the 1.03G revision, now with the chip from the
newer board, booted up as it should! The POST screen showed the chip to
have the 2801 BIOS. I was able to connect a hard drive, optical disc, ram,
video card etc.However there is still a problem at the BIOS level. For some
reason, it would not let me enter a date for the month of May later than May
12 (we were the 19th), which suggested to me that this BIOS file is perhaps
slightly corrupt. However Windows XP et me enter the correct date for the
system...
The newer board will still not boot up at all. Guess I'll have to wait for
the new BIOS chip to arrive to check that one out further. It could be the
processor (I'l loath to keep swapping these around, especially because of
that lousy Intel heatsink/fan fixing arrangement).
The problem with the older board was therfore clearly with the BIOS. What is
not clear is why the BIOS file got so damaged as to be useless. Nor is it
clear why the BIOS in the newer board is apparently slightly corrupted, nor
why the newer board would not boot up at all with BIOS/chip. I can see
absolutely no explanation of wny the BIOS should get ocrrupted in this way.
I would be grateful for any suggestions as to the safest/most reliable
method of flashing the latest BIOS onto these two chip, bearing in mind that
I should soon have a third one arriving with, supposedly, the latest BIOS
revision already on it.
I'll check out these Port 80 debugger cards too, Paul.
Thanks in advance
LS