On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 21:59:48 +1100, Monty
wrote:


Croy, firstly an apology for a typo; When I told you where to find the
motherboard revision number, I said next to the HDD connector. I meant
to type FDD connector.


That wasn't a problem until I read your correction. I
hadn't actually looked for the revision because I "knew" it
was a rev 1.0 board. But your note, above, prompted me to
get down and look, just to verify, and what do I see? 1.2!
I have always thought this was a 1.0 board--but now I can't
remember why I thought that. This poses a new problem, as
the Gigabyte pages don't even mention a rev 1.2. Only 1.0,
2.1, and 3.0.

I bought this board myself, and have the manual. The manual
is rev. 1001, which I vaguely remember being told is not the
same as the board rev.


I have uploaded a drawing of the motherboard (from the user manual)
and highlighted the location of the revision number. You can see this
drawing at http://preview.tinyurl.com/d7qn4vf


That link didn't work for me. When I click on the "proceed
to this site", I get a message stating, "Invalid or Deleted
File". I'm assuming that in that file, you were indicating
the very corner of the board, very close to a mounting or
tooling hole.


I have also uploaded a photo of the first page of my Gigabyte BIOS
which shows the BIOS revision - F14. On Sunday, I upgraded my BIOS
from F12 - using Q-Flash. This photo may be viewed at
http://preview.tinyurl.com/cl7gy7n

If you want to view the BIOS revision on your PC as it flashes past,
just note where the F14 is on the screen on the photo mentioned above
and try to watch that spot on your monitor. Failing that, you can
always install Belarc Advisor, which will tell you the BIOS revision
level.


That page came up fine, but I in the photo I took of that
screen on my machine the other day, it shows:

"GA-M55plus-S3G FA"


At the moment, I don't think you can update your BIOS to a later
level. If my guess is correct, it is already at the latest level for
your motherboard which current evidence (the BIOS rev FIB mentioned by
Paul) suggests that your motherboard is rev 2.1.


I looked at that page that Paul referenced, and just get
more confused. The first GA-M55plus-S3G listed, carries no
revision, and has a Athlon 1100 chipset, and has the same
date referenced in the BIOS string, but what's that "V2" on
the end of the BIOS Id?

My board has the nVidia GE-Foce 6100 chipset, which matches
the "rev. 1.x" version, 3 lines down, but the BIOS date
doesn't match.

It appears that it might be time to send a query to
Gigabyte. But I now see they only list phone numbers on
their page--no email address. Something to think about when
I'm on the hunt for another MB!


I still haven't spelt out the steps that I used to upgrade my bios
level from F12 to F14. It basically involves using Q-Flash, a flash
drive to hold at least 2MB (1MB for a backup file, 1MB for the update
file) and about 5-10 minutes of your time. This writeup will not
happen for a couple of days.


I've watched a you-tube video that shows what looks like the
process, and it looked pretty straight-forward.

Last night I actually used Q-Flash to make a backup, and
saved it to a floppy. I copied it over to a HDD after that,
and used CTMC to tear it apart and examine all the pieces,
but couldn't find anything the looked like a BIOS rev. Maybe
the current rev actually is "FA", but I don't see that on
the list for rev. 1.0 boards.

Fortunately, this box is now running well enough that I can
take my time with updating the BIOS.

Thanks for the help and the time you've put in on this.

--
croy