croy wrote:
On Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:52:29 -0400, Paul
wrote:


From the first screen of the BIOS, I see:

09/04/2006-C51-MCP51-6A61HG0LC-00

That's at the very bottom line on the screen.

Is that the "BIOS string" you were referring to?

Yes, that's the BIOS string.

If I Google that, I can sometimes find a reference to it.

http://www.wimsbios.com/biosupdates/gigabyte.jsp

Gigabyte GA-M55PLUS-S3G Athlon 1100 rev 0 FIB GA-M55PLUS-S3GV2 09/04/2006-C51-MCP51-6A61HG0LC-00

Confusing. Everything on that line looks right, except for
the BIOS revision and the chipset. My board has the nVidia
GeForce 6100 chipset. And if what I see near the top of the
first BIOS screen is indicitive, the current BIOS revision
is "FA". Maybe the list on that site is just not
correct--but there is other confusion as well:

On the corner of the board, I see "Rev. 1.2"

But on the Gigabyte pages for BIOS updates, I see updates
for boards of Revision 1.0, 2.1, and 3.0. No 1.2.


So even without looking up the date of the BIOS, on the Gigabyte web site,
I can guess at what release it might be (F1B).


not "FIB"?


One reason for using BIOS strings, is for tracing down
motherboards which have no labels on the motherboard
surface. Some of the PCChips branded motherboards, they
have no label on the motherboard. For those motherboards,
you use the BIOS string to try to figure out the
motherboard information. Every little bit of information
helps.

I have the manual! It is definitely a Gigabyte
GA-M55plus-S3G. What rev? The board says 1.2, but the
Gigabyte page doesn't seem to know of a 1.2.

Thank for your replies and suggestions.


A possible explanation for the revision 1.2 is that,
when a motherboard is designed, there is a prototype (1.0),
a revision after that (1.1) and a final revision (1.2). The
final revision is the one that goes into production. (That
is apparently what Asus does. The other companies might
do something similar.) The final revision must be cosmetically
perfect, and no cuts and straps are allowed. That means, that
any electrical changes, have to be perfected on the 1.1 board.
They only make a few 1.0 and 1.1 boards, for usage in the
laboratory. (Where I used to work, our minimum quantity
was five boards of each. Even if we didn't use them all, we
still made five of them.) For the 1.2, they might make 100,000
of those.

Referring to the board as 1.0, is for marketing reasons. If the
first board in a series was documented as 1.2, it would confuse
the customers.

When they make a revision 2 stream or revision 3 stream, the
board may not go through as much development work. In some cases,
all that has changed, is the silicon revision of the chipset
might be different.

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.

Paul