Tyrsonswood

I pretty much know the answer to this, but just on the chance somebody knows of a workaround for this.......

My new ECS A880GM-AD3 died this morning...... Their new eBLU BIOS update feature failed....... In other words it "eBLU-up", and left me with an expensive wall hanging, or a square Frisbee, or......... Damn I'm bummed.

Anyways, ECS is not responsible for bad BIOS flashes according to their website, although I'm sure they repair them for a $$$. If I RMA this as some kind of "failure" under warranty they can more than likely spot a failed flash and want to charge my a$$ for the repair/replacement. Between that and shipping it's probably best to just buy another board..... it would certainly be quicker turn around.

My question is, How do they fix these at the factory? They have some way of re-flashing that doesn't involve replacing the chip anymore....... Just wondering if there's a way to recover this.....

It does fire up, lights are on, fans running, no beep codes unless I pull the RAM. It will slowly flash the power light and at a faster rate hit the CD/DVD ROM drive like it's wanting to do something, but no video, not responding to keyboard....... It will shut down if I hold the power button long enough. So there's partially "something" there.

Any ideas short of a shotgun?

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Veridian3

Pull out the graphics cards, leave in one stick. Reset the CMOS (take out the battery for a couple of mins etc too) and try all the different onboard display outputs. If you still dont get a pic then you can consider hot flashing.

That means if you have a motherboard with the same type of BIOS chip (if it is removable) then you can boot to a dos prompt on the working board. Remove the chip, pop the ECS one on, flash, turn off and then put the bios chips back in their correct boards.

Also, for future updates it is worth flashing in DOS (or on some boards via their BIOS based flash utility). There is just less that can go wrong, impact the flash procedure. All these windows flashing utilities are nice in theory but I never use them.

Tyrsonswood

I've always flashed in DOS too........ No floppy header on this board.....


Oh and it's a soldered in chip as far as I can see.

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Veridian3

Actually, 3rd option... you could try blind flashing. Set up a bootable device (USB) put the bios for the board on that along with an auto execute file etc. See if you can get it to flash in DOS without any user interaction. I'd imagine you would need to add the various switches such as force, clear, reboot to the flash command.

I use method 2 to create my DOS bootable USB drives: http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm

iPlayer

That should do it, but if all fails, you could contact still local system builders, and ask if they have an eeprom writer/programmer to reflash it for you. You could also ask them to flash it on a new chip, if there's need to.

Tyrsonswood

Well, I've got a bootable USB stick, all the needed files and an autoexec.bat that should do the job........ No happy happy.


I've disconnected any other drives and now I get a random beep on occasion, random meaning there's no specific timing to it. The USB stick is flashing........


I've found a REBOOT command and a Quiet command but no "force" command..... I figure "Quiet" would have to force the flash with no input but not sure about that..... I've also no way to test the batch file.

As far as help from local system builders, there are none.......

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[hobo]eclipse

my bad was posting about replacing the chip......

sry i have no further input, lol

good luk

Neshi

You could take a chance with an RMA and hope they won't check it and just replace it.

I tried it with a Sapphire videocard. I'd overclocked it and bought it 2ndhand, didn't have a receipt or anything. When it broke down I send it in and got a replacement send back.

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If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Tyrsonswood

I probably will, their support doesn't open back up until Monday. I'll at least get info on their RMA procedure/possible costs....... In the mean time I may have to get another board as Newegg could get me another board here quicker than an RMA ever could. I've got "23 days" to activate Win7 on that machine........ (activation freaked when I added the RAID box...... Now I have to call Microsoft)


Seriously bummed.

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mkk

Too bad about the missing floppy header, a while back ECS had an auto-flash feature locked to a physical floppy. Hope you can find some measure that works. On a motherboard with a single BIOS chip I wouldn't dare running one of those damn Windows flashers. At least not ASUS's.

Judas

usually you can stick some one boards... a disk or flash drive in with the name of a .rom/.bin file

consult your manual.. or online for more information about that though

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Tyrsonswood

Been there, done that........ repeatedly

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Tyrsonswood

Good gods! Have you ever tried to get an RMA from ECS? It's an endless tunnel of crap..... I just spent a half hour getting NOWHERE! They don't list a phone number either...... probably with good reason. IDIOTS!

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Tyrsonswood

Okay...... Upon removing the motherboard yesterday, making room for it's replacement I noticed this.....



Doing a little googling I find that there are 8-pin BIOS chips so my thinking is this may be the BIOS and the chip is replaceable.

Now, I ordered another board from Newegg and it should be here today, I haven't contacted ECS yet, as their RMA department has been closed since the 17th of last month and they re-open today..... Today would not be a good day to call, It's long distance and I bet they are busy. So I have a DOA board and a brand new board in the house at the same time.....

What chance do I have of a Hot swap BIOS flash with this type of chip? I've no problem getting the chip out and back into the boards.... these are just like the Op-amp chips in audio gear that I'm used to working on, physically, but could the actual swapping fry the good chip because it's under power?
There should be no issue putting the good chip into the old board, un-powered, and seeing if it boots, right?

I don't want to end the day with 2 dead boards.........

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Veridian3

Yeah, thats the BIOS chip. Looks like they thought about going with dual BIOS too...

I would say have a play with the chips and see what boots/doesnt. Whats the worst that could happen???

asedsa

Hi Tyrsonswood,

I hope you gonna like it what I found. Unfortunately, I found this on my local language but I will try to translate this for you.

You have three ways to do what you need:

1)HotSwapping
2)with ISA video card
3)with EPROM programmer

Hot Swapping is the most risky way, but if you do correctly it will work 99%.
First you need to pull out the bios chip from mobo that you ordered.
Then, ground yourself by touching something steel, and easy pull out bios chip from old mobo. Put new bios chip into old mobo and then boot your PC using (here says floppy drive-probably too old) USB flash drive that you were using for previously upgrading/flashing your BIOS and when you did that select "back up" of bios (or something like that of available options). NOW you need to replace that new chip with old chip but PC must be turned ON when you do replacing. My suggestion is, you know that pulling out the chip is sometimes difficult, so before replacing try to slacken a chip, just a little bit. Now when you did that, replace new chip with old chip very carefully because PC is turned ON, and if everything is OK then flash old chip using previously saved bios backup. Do not forget to remove all hardware from the case and mobo which you dont need while you doing this.

Using ISA video card(e.g. old one voodoo 6000), means that you will pull out everything from mobo, just leave ISA card, then boot your PC from floppy drive/USB which have to be bootable and contain new bios file and flash program. If you successfully boot your PC, then just flash your bios.

The most safe way and probably the most expensive is using EPROM programmer where you will put new chip and copy all data from there, then you will put old chip and paste all data from new chip to old chip and all job is done.

Best regards

mkk

At least now that it's a swap'able chip perhaps ECS can manage to send you a new one for a handling fee, and then you won't have to hot swap. I can pretty much guarantee that they are indeed swamped right now. For example I was RMA'ing a couple of Acer machines at work today and between getting two different case numbers the numerical had risen over three hundred points in just a few minutes. I bet they are using pan-european numbering or perhaps even international, but anyway.

Tyrsonswood

Okay....... Here was the procedure.

1. Verify that the new board was good. I hooked up everything the way I had it with the failed board, including sound cards, PCIe video card, RAID card, etc. and booted into Win7.

2. Modified the boot USB stick to not run the autoexec.bat by renaming it autoexec.bad...... This had the newest version of the BIOS on it, not the version that shipped with the board.

3. Removed all the extra cards, hard drives and their cage (for access) and with the power off loosened the BIOS chip and removed it a few times to be sure I had proper room as I did this in the case..... Would have been easier on the bench, obviously, but that would have been another hassle itself.

4. With the good BIOS in the new board (somewhat loose) I booted several times off the USB stick to make sure that was working properly. Then while booted to the C: prompt for the USB stick I carefully swapped BIOS chips.

5. With it still running I then ran the BIOS flash with the new version of the rom, it completed in about 1 minute with no problems. I rebooted from the USB with that chip, went into setup a few times and all looked good. New board/old chip.

6. Next step was to remove the new board from the case, swap BIOS chips, RAM, CPU etc. and install the old board with the newly flashed old chip in the case and built the system the way I had it before. Booted into setup and did all my settings. Booted into Win7, come to HH and type this post.

7. Not really a step, but I have yet to test the new board and it's chip, but I don't expect any issues with that as nothing was changed there.


Problem solved without getting ECS involved....... Now I could be a slimeball and return the new board to Newegg and accept the restocking fee, OR get a CPU, some RAM, a PSU, some misc bits, and build another system. Think I'll build another system!

Thanks for everybody's help and suggestions....... Happy Happy!

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asedsa

Great, I am glad to see that hotswapping is not big deal.

Good luck with new bios

Veridian3

... and keep hold of that bootable usb stick. Always handy for BIOS flashes and SSD/gfx firmware updates if you ever do one.

Tyrsonswood

It was kind of tricky for me.... my hands aren't what they used to be for one. Secondly the reset and power buttons on the board are "right there!" (you can see them in the photo) I was doing a dry run with the system running and bumped the power button and "poof" it shut off...... Heart sank for a second

I'm going to..... that thing is great! I'll probably make up one with some accessory files such as FORMAT, FDISK, a TXT editor and the like....... I found that HP program for creating the boot thumb drive on some "scary chinese site" and was sure it was going to be infected with something, but it was clean....... I wasn't about to pay for the CD that was offered on the site you linked to, just to get the one file. It's kind of hard to track down otherwise.

I left + rep where I could, have to spread it around for most of you though

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blibbax

Another system you say? That's just greedy :P

Congratulations on getting it all fixed though

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Tyrsonswood

Well............... This board does unlock cores......

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iPlayer

Do you even have use for a third desktop?

Tyrsonswood

Let's see...............

The loft has three, two AMD's, the Phenom II X4 "Manna from HardwareHeaven System" and this Athlon II X2 RACK unit. Also an intel dual core E2200 running the midi functions. (Not to mention the docking station for the laptop)

In the livingroom there is an E6400 home stereo rack system with 2 gig RAM an 80gig boot drive and a 160 gig RAID, hooked up to an Onkyo HT-R510 that I just scored from Goodwill (I'm hooking that up right now) This system is for playing music all day and internet stuff. I have a few DVDs but don't watch movies much...... It's capable of that.

In the basement recording room ( The BASS-ROOM) there is a P4 Tyan with 3 gigs, 8 analog audio inputs and 100 gigs worth of SCSI drives..... I get LOUD down there! (3 guitar amps and a bass rig, plus some misc drums....... not a full kit as I'm not a drummer)


So....... Yeah, there's nothing in the kitchen yet....

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blibbax

You have a PC as good as my main for "running the midi functions". Incredible :P

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Tyrsonswood

You have twice the RAM, a much better video card, and much more drive space.

Mine is made out of stuff from the surplus electronics shop...... Neat stuff like the 8 gig sata1 SSD boot drive, but in the end it's somebody else's junk.

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blibbax

Yeah I was only joking around, didn't expect a gaming GPU in your midi rig :P

Not that I know what midi is or does

Most of my PCs are composed mostly of other people's junk too, the exception being the one in my specs, in which I bought everything except the GPU, the IDE drives and the DVD burner.

I don't have an electronics shop to obtain surplus from here, but I do have friends and relatives who would otherwise take old PCs to the tip!

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