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k8v-se-d crashfree bios2. HA!
I got a chance to try Asus's crashfree bios2 on my k8v-se-d. That feature works as well as the Asus's EZFLASH for the board, meaning not at all. The EZFLASH program found the new bios on the floppy, correctly erased the flash, and then griped that it couldn't burn the new bios onto flash. It effectively stopped there. Hitting the reset didn't cause the crashfree-bios to find that the old bios in flash was defective and get a new one from floppy. As far as I could tell it did nothing. Ditto for putting the distribution CD into the dvd drive as instructed in the manual. It also didn't load the original distribution bios back. I'm just beside myself that some firmware engineer at Asus would write a flash program that didn't check that everything was in order before erasing vital information. -wolfgang |
#2
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In article , Charlie Root
wrote: I got a chance to try Asus's crashfree bios2 on my k8v-se-d. That feature works as well as the Asus's EZFLASH for the board, meaning not at all. The EZFLASH program found the new bios on the floppy, correctly erased the flash, and then griped that it couldn't burn the new bios onto flash. It effectively stopped there. Hitting the reset didn't cause the crashfree-bios to find that the old bios in flash was defective and get a new one from floppy. As far as I could tell it did nothing. Ditto for putting the distribution CD into the dvd drive as instructed in the manual. It also didn't load the original distribution bios back. I'm just beside myself that some firmware engineer at Asus would write a flash program that didn't check that everything was in order before erasing vital information. -wolfgang Have you tried the clear the cmos procedure (with the computer unplugged) ? What about pressing alt f2 at powerup, with a floppy or CD in the drive with a file at the root level with the right file name ? I think on my motherboard CD, there is a P4C800ED.ROM file or something on it. You may need to rename whatever file you are feeding it, to whatever the default name is for your board (K8VSEDX.ROM). If you examine your CD on another computer, you should be able to see that file at the top (root) level. The only reason I suggest that, is I've been searching on "crashfree" and reading threads over on Abxzone. And there are other boards that fail the crashfree test. The complicating factor seems to involve the boot block. Either the boot block programming was defective in the first place (the bad Asus firmware engineer theory) or one of those "wrapper script" flash programs was provided with the BIOS release, and it includes the param to specify erasing the boot block as well. You have no escape via crashfree, if the boot block is erased. http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showth...74&postcount=5 Ah, now this is interesting... http://www.ami.com/support/doc/AMIBI...epaper_v10.pdf so it isn't purely an Asus engineer - the AMI guy had a hand in it too :-) That doc says to press ctrl and home down on the keyboard, then switch on the power. Try that instead of alt f2. I've also seen holding down insert mentioned, but maybe that was just to enter the BIOS. Paul |
#3
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"Charlie Root" wrote in message ... I got a chance to try Asus's crashfree bios2 on my k8v-se-d. That feature works as well as the Asus's EZFLASH for the board, meaning not at all. The EZFLASH program found the new bios on the floppy, correctly erased the flash, and then griped that it couldn't burn the new bios onto flash. It effectively stopped there. Hitting the reset didn't cause the crashfree-bios to find that the old bios in flash was defective and get a new one from floppy. As far as I could tell it did nothing. Ditto for putting the distribution CD into the dvd drive as instructed in the manual. It also didn't load the original distribution bios back. I'm just beside myself that some firmware engineer at Asus would write a flash program that didn't check that everything was in order before erasing vital information. -wolfgang Did you read the instructions for that BIOS upgrade? Sometimes Asus releases a bios with instructions not to use the built-in flash utility but to use the most recent version of asusupdate or afudos or aflash depending on the chip set. Jim M |
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"Charlie Root" wrote in message ... I got a chance to try Asus's crashfree bios2 on my k8v-se-d. That feature works as well as the Asus's EZFLASH for the board, meaning not at all. The EZFLASH program found the new bios on the floppy, correctly erased the flash, and then griped that it couldn't burn the new bios onto flash. It effectively stopped there. Hitting the reset didn't cause the crashfree-bios to find that the old bios in flash was defective and get a new one from floppy. As far as I could tell it did nothing. Ditto for putting the distribution CD into the dvd drive as instructed in the manual. It also didn't load the original distribution bios back. I'm just beside myself that some firmware engineer at Asus would write a flash program that didn't check that everything was in order before erasing vital information. -wolfgang I forgot to say I also ruined the BIOS when I tried to flash the bios on my k8v-se dlx using ezflash. No matter what I tried to do to recover it would not boot. Apparently because the boot block was munged. Anyway I got a new BIOS chip from www.badflash.com they'll either program your old chip or send you a new one. I also sent an e-mail to asus asking then about a new bios chip, but I haven't heard from them yet. Jim M |
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"JBM" writes: Did you read the instructions for that BIOS upgrade? Sometimes Asus releases a bios with instructions not to use the built-in flash utility but to use the most recent version of asusupdate or afudos or aflash depending on the chip set. I didn't see anything that looked like per-bios rev instructions. The zip file had, well, zip in it other than the ROM image itself. The so called release notes said only something about new cpu's. I forgot to say I also ruined the BIOS when I tried to flash the bios on my k8v-se dlx using ezflash. No matter what I tried to do to recover it would not boot. Apparently because the boot block was munged. Anyway I got a new BIOS chip from www.badflash.com they'll either program your old chip or send you a new one. I also sent an e-mail to asus asking then about a new bios chip, but I haven't heard from them yet. Well, we have two data points that EZFLASH has some serious problems. The part about Asus not getting back to you is disconcerting. Maybe I should just drive down their. Their US address is only a few miles down the road from me in Fremont. I was hoping I could just pick up a working flash with current firmware (and a hopefully working version of EZFLASH in that firmware!). -wolfgang -- Wolfgang S. Rupprecht http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/ New toy: Voice over ip phone. Sounds much better than an analog phone. http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/voip.html |
#7
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"JBM" writes: Anyway I got a new BIOS chip from www.badflash.com they'll either program your old chip or send you a new one. Never got email back from them, but I did call their Fremont phone number. They won't swap my flash for me at their Fremont location, preferring instead to charge me $25 to fedex one from Kentucky. What a racket. Best line "We consider flashing an at-risk operation so it isn't covered the same way a broken board is." Ahem. If their software worked as advertised it wouldn't be such an "at-risk" operation. One would only have to worry about power failures, which are pretty rare around here. -wolfgang -- Wolfgang S. Rupprecht http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/ New toy: Voice over ip phone. Sounds much better than an analog phone. http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/voip.html |
#8
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"Wolfgang S. Rupprecht" .wsrcc.com wrote in message ... "JBM" writes: Anyway I got a new BIOS chip from www.badflash.com they'll either program your old chip or send you a new one. Never got email back from them, but I did call their Fremont phone number. They won't swap my flash for me at their Fremont location, preferring instead to charge me $25 to fedex one from Kentucky. What a racket. Best line "We consider flashing an at-risk operation so it isn't covered the same way a broken board is." Ahem. If their software worked as advertised it wouldn't be such an "at-risk" operation. One would only have to worry about power failures, which are pretty rare around here. -wolfgang -- Wolfgang S. Rupprecht http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/ New toy: Voice over ip phone. Sounds much better than an analog phone. http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/voip.html I just checked on the German asus ftp site and this file was in the zipped bios file. But it wasn't in the file I downloaded from the USA web site. Asus needs to get their act together. ACHTUNG: Dieses BIOS darf NUR mit den folgenden Flashtoolversionen upgedated werden (oder höhere Versionen) ! Keine älteren Versionen verwenden ! Warning: This BIOS can only be flashed with the following flashtool versions (or higher versions) ! Do NOT use older versions ! - ASUS LiveUpdate v5.28.01 - ASUS AFUDOS v2.07 Flashtools - ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/BIOS/BIOS_FLASH_UTILS AFUDOS usage: "afudos /ifilename /pc" (e.g "afudos /i1014.rom /pc") Jim M |
#9
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"JBM" writes: I just checked on the German asus ftp site and this file was in the zipped bios file. But it wasn't in the file I downloaded from the USA web site. Asus needs to get their act together. They really need to stuff some interlock code into their AFUDOS, EZFLASH and UPDATE software. The versions below the critical version needed to correctly burn a flash image could then refuse to run with that flash image. Reserving 3 words in the flash image for the minimum version numbers of each of the 3 programs and having their burning software check these locations should do the trick. The advantage to them is that this way the firmware is self-documenting and they don't need to worry that some support guy will screw up and cause 10,000 dead boards to show up for RMA. -wolfgang -- Wolfgang S. Rupprecht http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/ New toy: Voice over ip phone. Sounds much better than an analog phone. http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/voip.html |
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