abit nf7s v2 fried flashed with wrong bios

[cappmgr]

I tried and tried to get the sata drive to work as the boot drive work with no joy. So I unknowingly falshed the BIOS with the wrong version. My bad. I reset the BIOS with the jumpers and it will not POST just a black screen.
So I put the awdflash and the correct bin into an auoexec.bat file on a bootup disk but the box gose straight to the hd and not the floopy. Is there any way to make the box access the floopy drive first. Before I flashed with the wrong BIOS I had the boot sequence floopy, hd, cdrom.

I must say that the awdflash program is not very good. It should have known that it was the wrong bin file I used a bin file for v1.2 and not v2.

MB nForce2|5P1A4D NF7-S V2 ABIT ATX
CPU AMD|2800/333 ATHLON XP BARTON R
SATA HD 36GB|WD 10K RPM WD360GD 8MB OEM could never get it to boot
IDE HD 20GB|MAXTOR RPM 5200 currently using this as boot drive
VGA ROSEWILL|RADEON9200SE 128MB DDR
POWERSUPPLY|MGE 400W PSVG-400 RTL

Thank you,
Marty

 

[mainegeek]

cappmgr,
Disconnect all your drives except for the floppy.

 

[cappmgr]

I'll try that tonight and post back. Is that a shot in the dark? Does the system know that the only drive is the a:\ drive it and goes there straight away. If yes how? I am new at this and taking my lumps. I write s\w and this is my first adventure into building a box.
Thank you,
Marty

 

[mainegeek]

cappmgr,
Also, when you created the autoexec.bat did you create it with a DOS Editor or Notepad? If you created it with Notepad did you remember to save it as .bat and not .txt?
This is easy to over-look.

Does your autoexec.bat look like this.?

@ECHO OFF
@AWDFLASH XXXXXX.BIN /py

(XXXXXX.bin being the name of the bios rom file that you are using)

The /py switch will force the flash utility to re-program the bios with out any user intervention needed.

Just curious as to how your .bat is and if there is an easier way than how I stated. This is usually how I do it first before moving on to hot-swapping.

 

[mainegeek]

cappmgr,
Also, you wrote

"Is that a shot in the dark? Does the system know that the only drive is the a:\ drive it and goes there straight away."

It should, as there would be no other drive to check and the floppy should still be bootable because it lives in the boot block which isn't over-written by the flash utilty with out using a special command line switch.

 

[micker377]

mainegeek:
Whenever my IDE cable to the primary drive gets loose (usually my clumsy hands), the computer tries to boot off the network.

 

[cappmgr]

mainegeek and micker377,
Thanks for the replies. No it is a bat file.
@ECHO OFF
AWDFLASH.EXE NF7D_27.BIN /py /sn /cd /cp /cc /cks /R

That is all that is in the autoexec.bat.
Still no joy. I disconnected all drives but the a:\ drive. It never accessed the drive. I then tried only the cdrom with the same files that are on the floppy heard it spin but again no joy. I did reset the CMOS after each attempt.

My friend popped the BIOS chip out and is going to try a hot swap. I hope he has the same chip in one of his boards.

I am very disappointed in the awdflash utility gui. I did not do it from the web as I read other postings that you should get the bin file and do it through the gui. There should have seen a checksum error when it read the chip and the bin file before the flash. Since I used the gui and was not prompted with anything before the flash I have no idea what flags it used. Like I posted my bad for using the wrong bin file but the flash utility should have either said no don't do it or prompted me with are you sure? This is not the correct version.

So I am SOL right now.

Here is something that I found interesting. It may be worth a shot before a hot swap. I called a computer shop that I have dealt with and explained the problem. He said that most mobos have a hot key combination he thought it was ALF-F2 where the mobo would go straight to the a:\ drive on start up if the correct hot keys where held down look for a bin file and flash the BIOS. He said they put this on boards just for the problem I am having.

I found one post the said ALT-HOME it did not work. I tried every key combination that you could think of.

Very disappointed in this board and the awdflash. The reason this whole thing started is because I could not get it to use the sata as a boot drive. And I followed the instructions to the letter. F6 then S and inserted the floppy that had the drivers. Even tried making another floppy with the drivers on the mobo cd and it still did not work. But I digress that is for another post if I can ever get this back to that state where I had it booting from the IDE HD.

Thanks again,
Marty

 

[cappmgr]

OK, I have received my new BIOS chip in the mail.
I got it from this site

http://www.abit-usa.com/abitparts/bios_chip_4.php

BIOS chip only! There is only one version of BIOS code that works with all different revisions. Will be pre-programmed with the latest code.

Does the above message mean that it will have the latest version for my board NF7D_27.BIN?

As I was waiting for the chip I ordered and recieved a new case because the case I was using was very old and had no place for fans. As stated earlier I am new at this.

Everything is presently in the other case. Should I put the chip in the mobo in the other case and get it back to the state it was in. Or take everything out put the bare minimum in the new case and start from there? The goal is getting the sata drive working and I am not doing very well. I have had it apart on the table and still could not get past a Verifying DMI Pool screen when trying to use the sata as the boot drive.
I will try to follow this link to the letter

http://www.lvcoyote.com/

sata/raid guide on the left frame.
Any input greatly appreciated.
Marty

 

[garebo]

It seems its already flashed to the latest bios and that would make sense, so im sure you are good to go there.
As for the other, i would take the motherboard out of the case, put some foam material on the table for the motherboard to sit on, and hook up just the minimum needed to boot up, then go from there. Once you have everything up and running well then install all to case.
Since you pointed out you are new at this perhaps i should point out that you want to make sure you use stand-offs and put them in the right place so they correspond to the holes in the motherboard. In other words dont put any standoffs(especially metal) where you arent going to use them. Some people have done that and fried their mobo (motherboard).
And some people try connecting the mobo to the case without standoffs. This results in a short as solder tips on the bottom of the mobo make contact with the case, not good!


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[cappmgr]

Thank you all this closes the thread thread602-1067234.
Marty