On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 11:40:54PM +0200, Dan Armak wrote:
You do. It's your motherboard :)
Yes, I know that :-) I meant I don't have special equipment for flashing the chip outside the motherboard. That's why I thought it didn't matter whether it was removable or not.
The thought of buying a blank one hadn't occurred to me. I'm purely a software guy. I wouldn't know what to buy...
Just buy the same one that's already in your mainboard, that's the easiest option. The chips should be available from most electronics stores. An example in Germany: http://www.bios-chip.de/bios-chips,_leer.htm
Some chips supported by 'flashrom' are listed here: http://www.linuxbios.org/Supported_Chipsets_and_Devices#Flash_Devices_Suppor...
I don't want to use linuxbios if there's a non-negligible chance of trashing my motherboard in the process. If there's no suitable board I can buy and expect to work, and if I have to do stuff like replacing the BIOS chip, then I'll probably just give it up for now.
It's not as bad as I probably made it sound :) The risk to damage your board is very very small, AFAIK. The worst that can usually happen is that you overwrite your BIOS chip with a bogus image and cannot boot anymore. Or put it in the socket the wrong way(which I did once), in which case it'll get pretty hot and will probably be damaged (usually only the chip though, but not your board).
The solution is to pull a backup image first, and flash it to an empty chip, test booting with that chip, and if it works put it in your bank safe :) From there you can mess up if you want, as you can always use that working backup BIOS chip if things go wrong.
The http://www.bios-chip.de/ website (for example) also offers BIOS chips which are already flashed with your factory (AMI/AWARD/Phoenix) BIOS for ca. 10 Euros, that's another easy way to get a backup...
Uwe.