croy wrote:
On Mon, 25 Mar 2013 21:59:58 +1100, Monty
wrote:

On Sat, 23 Mar 2013 11:30:43 -0700, croy
wrote:

Mainboard: GA-M55plus-S3G

When I boot my computer, the first screen of the BIOS
claims: "Award v6.00PG".
The following description is not comprehensive but it attempts to
provide a guide to how a BIOS module is created.

Think of the BIOS as a set of routines that support the variety of
features which are installed/included on your motherboard. These
routines are written by Phoenix and supplied to motherboard
manufacturers. The manufacturer then selects the routines which are
appropriate for a given motherboard and compiles these into a BIOS
module using "Award v6.00PG".

If one or more routines are rewritten, for whatever reason, this may
trigger a new BIOS revision being released by the motherboard
manufacturer. These are typically labelled ga-p35-ds4_f1.exe thru
ga-p35-ds4_f14.exe or similar. The names used here are applicable for
my spare PC.

(Croy, It is getting late for me and I will continue tomorrow.)

Thanks for the lessons!

One problem has been solved--failure to keep the hard drive
boot order after a power-off. I put a fresh CMOS battery
in, and that seems to have fixed it. The old one measured
about 2.6v, whereas the new one was about 3.3v. Maybe more
due to contacts than battery strength--the spring in the
contacts seems very light.

But still curious about BIOS versions, and how to update. It
seems like the methods I tried should have worked. But
maybe the version isn't reported in the bootup screen (?).


The "Award v6.00PG" is the development stream of the Award software.
You would hope, that all the BIOS created for a particular motherboard,
are developed using the same tool flow. Changing BIOS tools mid-stream
is not a good idea, as it can introduce more bugs.

Award is a BIOS company. They provide core code, to make motherboards
work. The motherboard manufacturer writes less of the code as a result.

In fact, a large number of companies contribute code. So it's not
like a single developer sits in the basement at Gigabyte, and cranks
out custom code from nothing. To a large extent, it's like conducting
a symphony - the BIOS developer is a "conductor", assembling the parts,
and tuning stuff.

The "Award v6.00PG" then, isn't a revision.

You will see a BIOS string printed on the screen

05/19/2004-VT8623-8235-CLE26I01C-00

and the date there might be indicative of the release.

Since the BIOS image is a small file system, you can
also take the BIOS all apart, into its constituent parts,
uncompress it, then view the results as a series of
plaintext strings. And figure out stuff from that.
With older Award BIOS, the internal compression method
is LHA. This package can help with the disassembly, and if
you look for posts discussing this package, you'll find worked examples
of how to do the disassembly of it.

ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/ctmc10.zip

If you use your BIOS flashing tools, to make a "backup copy" of
the current BIOS contents, you can analyse that and decide what is
resident inside the machine right now. Or, take a photo of the
first BIOS screen, and figure it out using the "BIOS string" printed
on the screen.

A "legal" BIOS, should have a unique BIOS string value, so
no two motherboards should use the same BIOS string. There were cases
in the past, where counterfeit motherboards just copied the BIOS
file from another machine. If you see reference on a motherboard
manufacturer site to "legal" BIOS, they're trying to claim they
didn't steal the code they're providing :-)

Paul