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From: Mirko on 26 Dec 2009 18:40
"BillW50" wrote:

> You may not have to remove the BIOS and reprogram it. As some BIOS
> protects a very small part of the BIOS for emergency reprogramming for
> cases like this. And this is known as a bricked computer. It usually works
> something like this:
>
> 1) Place the BIOS file on a floppy and turn on the computer with the
> floppy already in the drive, or
>
> 2) The same, but you have to hold down a key or keys when you power it on
> like the F2 key or something. Or
>
> 3) Computers without floppy drives can use USB (floppy, flash, hard, etc.)
> drives instead. But they must be formatted in FAT12/16. FAT32 or NTFS
> won't do.

Thank you for the suggestions. I know that every BIOS maker has its own
boot-block reduced functionality way to recovery the BIOS in case of wrong
or interrupted flashing process.
I used in the past the Phoenix parallel loopback way to reflash the BIOS on
an old Compaq laptop. I know also about the usual hotkey configuration that
force the startup from a floppy, USB or CD-Rom to reprogram the BIOS.
Unluckily this BIOS is an Insyde BIOS, and I've been unable to force the
booting fron the local floppy using all the methods that I've tried. Despite
that... I miss the code... that 256 KB of code to write on the 29F020
EEPROM.
In any case, if I would be able to find the code, I'm in the condition to
reprogrm it, in the "trivial" way, even if this requires good practice with
soldering and SMT devices. The most difficult part remains to find the BIOS.
I'm sure that somewhere it exists, but... I don't know how to locate it.
I'm afraid that my old PIII will remain forever without his "BIOS", and this
will keep my memory clean next time, when I will never miss to perform a
backup of the code, even if the provided utility misses that function.
I reprogrammed hundreds of BIOS, and I never had unexpected results. This
time I've been too confident, and I used a wrongly identified version (which
was correct for a similar laptop version). Sometimes... it happens.
Thank you.
Mirko.


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