I was preparing to flash an ECS NForce4-A939 motherboard with Linuxbios using advice I received earlier this week on this mailing list. Since the bios chip is a surface mount package, I have no easy way of restoring the original manufacturer bios image should I flash an invalid rom image to the motherboard.
To minimize my risk, I planned to flash a Gigabyte motherboard with a similar chipset configuration, just to prove my image would theoreticaly work on the ECS board. This motherboard has something called Dualbios, which essentially allows you to boot from a secondary bios image should something go wrong. However, I noticed that to activate this feature and access the backup BIOS image, you had to enter the CMOS setup for the motherboard, whereas I initally assumed the backup mechanism was jumper activated.
So my questions are:
1. Does anyone know if the Gigabyte Dualbios feature will still work once I flash the primary bios image with Linuxbios. If so, it would allow me to recover if my first image is bad. I don't see how it would work, since I assume Linuxbios will overwrite any recovery logic, rendering the backup bios image inaccessible.
2. Other than using a fallback image in my Linuxbios image, or using this Dualbios feature, are there any other economical ways to recover from a bad Linuxbios flash, when dealing with a non-socketed bios chip?
I just have this sinking feeling that I'll flash my MB, and end up with a $75 brick, hence these questions...
Thanks, Brad Brown
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