Hi all, I'm not really sure how this works, I'm guessing its a bit similar to a forum, but in lieu of creating threads and posting posts, you email instead?
Okay the reason for this communication, is I messed up when flashing my bios and flashed it with A7032VMS.700 instead of a .rom or a .bin. I think MSI's flash utility changes the .700 into something usable before it actually flashes the bios to the chip, but their instructions were heavily Windows based and I totally forgot that .EXE's are also for Dos and not just Windows.
When it first happened, I tried the AMIBOOT.ROM recovery with the .700 and a few other bios' for my board that I downloaded from MSI, but they haven't worked. I thought it may be down to the fact that they're not .bin's or .rom's. So I recently fixed a friends PC and he has Sata drives so I was able to get the backup.bin from my hard drive and tried renaming it AMIBOOT.ROM and saving it to floppy, but Fedora named it amiboot.rom and I couldn't rename it. I'm not sure if this makes a difference, but it didn't work anyhow. Does Amiboot have to be capitalized?
I'm guessing it looks as though the recovery feature isn't going to work? Is there anything I haven't tried yet?
I can get a replacement chip for a fiver, but before I do I'd like to find out if that will defiantly work? Or could there be a small chance that a new chip even with the correct bios wouldn't work? I haven't done anything but try the recovery method, so nothing should be damaged.
Thank you for reading.
Kind regards Phil
Hi Phil,
On 11.06.2009 11:49, Phil Neary wrote:
Hi all, I'm not really sure how this works, I'm guessing its a bit similar to a forum, but in lieu of creating threads and posting posts, you email instead?
Correct. Please make sure to use the "reply to all" button in your mailer. That will ensure the individual developers and the list see your mails.
[...] I messed up when flashing my bios and flashed it with A7032VMS.700 instead of a .rom or a .bin.
Which application did you use for reflashing? In theory, the A7032VMS.700 may just be a renamed .bin file.
[...] I tried the AMIBOOT.ROM recovery with the .700 and a few other bios' for my board [...], but they haven't worked.[...] I was able to get the backup.bin from my hard drive
Actually, the backup.bin may be key to reviving your board.
and tried renaming it AMIBOOT.ROM and saving it to floppy, but Fedora named it amiboot.rom[...]. Does Amiboot have to be capitalized?
AFAIK DOS doesn't care about name capitalization.
Is there anything I haven't tried yet?
It all depends on how adventurous you feel. Can you try to locate the ROM chip on your board and peel off the sticker? It might look similar to this: http://www.coreboot.org/File:Plcc32_chip.jpg and it is probably in a socket. Write down all text you see on the chip (not the sticker) and mail it to us. Then we can tell you which chips are compatible and how to recover. One way to recover is to hotflash the chip in another board with compatible flash bus (sounds complicated, but once we know the chip model, we can tell you which boards are compatible). That would save you the hassle of buying a new chip.
I can get a replacement chip for a fiver, but before I do I'd like to find out if that will defiantly work?
It should work, but it's not guaranteed. Ah yes, and there is the risk that your onboard network won't work anymore if you buy a preflashed chip because sometimes the old chip stores the MAC address of your onboard network card.
How experienced are you with Linux or *BSD? Our emergency recovery tools don't work under Windows (well, very old versions of our tools work under Windows).
Regards, Carl-Daniel
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Carl-Daniel Hailfinger -
Phil Neary