Asus P3Bf 1005 final bios out

[Brent]

At last, 1005 is finished. Ever since about beta 1004.005, I have had ACPI working like a charm, but beware any of you that are running 1004 without having installed Win98 with the /p j switch - this 1005 BIOS will install ACPI by default the first time you run the add new hardware wizard, and remove your APM Plug and Play BIOS and then reinstall a whole new kettle of fish. If your system is simple, you should be thrilled with the new features, but if you have odd bits and pieces of hardware or old or ACPI incompatible drivers, you could regret it until you have the time to troubleshoot and get on top of it.

[Jupp]

Hi folks,

a really weird story:

After I saw Brent's post, I downed Bios 1005 and the latest Aflash.exe. I did a reboot with a plain dos bootdisk, started Aflash, read everything *carefully*, saved my old bios, and flashed 1005. Aflash said that it flashed the bios 'successfully'. I powered the machine down, counted to 20 and powered on again.

Guess what happend?
Yeah, right, everything got srewed up badly. The machine powered on for a second and then powered down immediately. No boot, no beep, no post, nothing.

Woah, went to the fridge and picked up a beer.

Burp.

Opened the box and took the flash-prom out.

Today, at work I went to another office (yes, they have a flash programmer ) and checked the eeprom, because i thought that i fried it. And now comes the really funny part: The prom was flashed ok, it verified against the file from the Asus website and showed the same checksum as Aflash.exe. Anyway, I flashed back to 1004 and my rig is working again.

Any explanation for this?


R.



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P3B-F/P3-700E/256MB
G400Max/SBLive

[YoKoMo [1]]

Flashed fione here, created a bootable floppy and copied the flash files to the diskette, both machine flashed fine.

[Brent]

Hey Jupp,
I know the feeling, except sometimes I dont have any beers and then its really bad!
Both my P3Bf's have at odd times, but usually after a major BIOS revisions, "died".
This is not uncommon on user groups.
On each occasion, I have shorted the two provided solder points called I think "clrpwr" with metal tweaser points (Asus says use foil, but I dont want to short the whole board!), and each time everything has come back to life.
If you get as far as Windows splash screen,possibly, your graphic card driver/ hardware or an external drive or software communication program has shat itself with ACPI.

[Jupp]

Hi again,

i'm still puzzled about this. The 1005 bios was flashed with no errors. Verify on a flash programmer proved this. But somethig must be wrong, because my machine simply does not run at all with the 1005 release (Power on - HDDs are spinning up - Shut down). I never had a chance to see the Windoze splash screen.


R.



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P3B-F/P3-700E/256MB
G400Max/SBLive

[mlody]

never have problems with asus mobo and flasing bios. I flashed succesfully at least 20 asus mobo and now my p3b-f also flashed flawlessly

[mlody]

never have problems with asus mobo and flasing bios. I flashed succesfully at least 20 asus mobo and now my p3b-f also flashed flawlessly

[Brent]

Hows your power supply?
One other thing, my second system with a G200 after 1005 (and the betas dated after 1 12 99 - the ACPI by default Win 98 date) experienced spontaneaous reboots and I had to uninstall and reinstall the driver in safe mode. After a clean reinstall of Windows, no more problems.
1005 also causes a new "GART AGP to CPU controller thingy" to be detected, even before the ACPI BIOS is detected, so I have a gut feeling that some hardware is more sensitive to the upgrade than others.
The 1005 has a new boot block and my "dead" BIOS's are usually after this major type of BIOS revision. I have a habit of trying every beta and on a board per board basis, I experience a "dead" bios after every half a dozen or so cumulative flashes.
My suggestion to try resetting a "dead" BIOS using the clrpwr jumper is based on my experience and I have helped many other P3Bf owners who were going to post their chips off to Asus. You could also try removing the battery for a minute or so if you are battling to find the jumper.