MEB wrote:
"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
MEB wrote:
"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
Just spent an "interesting" (to put it mildly!) weekend on this project
to
enable a microprocessor upgrade. I wouldn't recommend it for the
faint-hearted, suffice it to say, or you might end up with a
paperweight.
:-)

You know, it wouldn't be quite so bad, except that in some cases, there
is
no reverse path available (i..e, it's a one way trip) - which seems
unforgiveable, on their part!

My question is: why do these BIOS manufacturers sometimes make it so
damn
difficult to upgrade/downgrade or go back to a previous version
(especially
when going from one manufacturer to one its subsidiaries, or vice versa
(like Dell and Intel)?

And not only that, but even block certain upgrades with certain chips,
just out of self-centered arrogance on their part (and not due to real
chip
limitations)?

I can definitely relate to that type of experience. Made a few
paper-weights in the early days, a couple my fault [like flashing with
the
wrong BIOS or leaving the flash disk in the wrong computer and
rebooting],
some the flash tool or a badly created upgrade.

I bet that was *quite* annoying, too.

More than annoying, my mistakes were costly, but getting the manufacturers
to admit that THEY had screwed up was a study in $technical war$.


Generally, the preliminaries are always to set the BIOS back to defaults
prior to any flash [unless you're over-clocking].

Also, sometimes it appears that *after* a flash is done, one may have to
first load its defaults BEFORE trying to reconfigure it for your system.
Learned that the hard way, but at least I didn't end up with a
paperweight
(but it was a close call, at some points).

Right, don't set ANYTHING after that first reboot, but SAVE the CMOS
settings, reboot, then carefully walk through the prior specialty
settings.ONE AT A TIME. And this because, these may also have been
modified
OR changed.


Actually, at a later point in time, it wouldn't boot into Windows, so I
had
created a DOS-only machine at that point. (Nice, really nice).
Still, it was better than being locked out of even being able to get in
and
set up the BIOS for the system (it demanded a password at that point).

Oh now that's interesting, a defaulted PASSWORD,,, so what
BIOS/motherboard
was this?

(This is for my Dell 4100 computer, with Windows98SE (circa year 2000 or
so):

The BIOS upgrade was Intel P10 (actually EA81510A.86A.0046.P10), and the
motherboard is (Dell) Intel D815EEA.

But the problem was apparently created because when I first flashed the BIOS
and then booted up, I did NOT initially select the option to load the
Defaults (but I did try changing some of the settings in there anyway).
Big mistake. After I rebooted, and tried get into BIOS to fix things up, it
asked me for a password (real nice, I'll tell ya!! And I tried a few
entries including just CR, and nothing worked).

Finally, I found the way out of this hole by temporarily moving the BIOS
jumper on the motherboard to the recovery or maintenance mode position, so
that when I rebooted, I *was* finally able to get into BIOS, and change the
settings to the proper values, and no password was required.

Now the microprocessor upgrade (PowerLeap) works great, and the only problem
I have is that I cannot select Ultra DMA Mode 5 in the BIOS, as Mode 4 is as
high as it goes in the list. Bummer.

Whether or not that means I am really locked into Ultra Mode 4, or just that
the BIOS can't tell what is actually available for my system (and Mode 5
was, in the previous Dell BIOS), I don't know for sure. But I'm hoping I
am running in Ultra Mode 5 (despite what the BIOS setting says).

I probably should look for some utility that actually can report the truth
(and not just what the BIOS screen allows me to select there), as my system
IS capable of running in Ultra Mode 5. (And the newer P11 Intel BIOS
recognizes that, but it is incompatible with this microprocessor upgrade -
already BTDT).


Finally got this all resolved. (Sigh of relief). What a weekend,
though. It can be a bit hair-raising, to say the least, since you
really
are treading on the razor's edge in this territory. :-).

Regarding the flash, if not BIOS instituted {newer boards}, the separate
flash tool/file usually has a switch to save the present BIOS to a bin
or
other file. Sadly many make that information hard to find.
If this is done, then one can roll-back to the older IF you also
over-write
the Boot code.

Never found that specific documentation, but I sure looked around a bit.
I
don't think its an option for all of them, though. Of course, I am
dealing
with an older board here, circa 2000.


Sounds like an old Phoenix or AMI BIOS.

per above...