BIOS help

[turkeytwizzler]

Hey all,

So... i was helping my Grandad today with his machine. He's just got a widescreen monitor, but his computer is old and didn't support the right resolution.

I was reading about the Mobo (Asus A7S8X-MX) and the onboard VGA graphics (SiS741) and it looked like I might be able to update the bios (and VBIOS) to support the widescreen resolutions.

Here's the SiS support page re: this issue:
sis.com/support/support_faqs_4.htm#73

And here's where I got the BIOS file from:
wimsbios.com/files/vgabiospatched/bios.jsp

So i followed the instructions and used Asus' BIOS Flashing software. It looked like it completed OK, but when the computer rebooted afterwards I got a "BIOS checksum error", along with the message "Insert media and press enter".

I rebooted again, and this time the monitor stayed off. The computer is turning on, but won't show me anything on the screen. If i hit enter, it does still try to read the floppy drive.

Is there any way I'll be able to automatically flash the BIOS from a floppy (i.e. without being able to see what I'm doing? or, are my suspicions correct - have I totally bricked it?

Thanks in advance for any info you may have!
Turk

 

[mailpup]

Try removing the CMOS battery for a few minutes and reinstall it. If it will post, you should enter the BIOS to restore previous settings.

 

[turkeytwizzler]

A few developments...

I created an MS-DOS boot disk that had an autoexec file to automatically flash the BIOS back to the last working version.

This was the only thing i could do as I couldn't get any output on the screen at all. So I put the disk in, and hoped for the best. It chugged away for a while, and then stopped ready the floppy, so i hit reset and bingo! Screen came back and the machine booted!

 

[mailpup]

Glad you got it running again. I would recommend not using any BIOS that you didn't download from the Asus website.

 

[jogaler]

Glad to here that you got flashed your bios. As per my knowledge the recent Asus motherboard has a reset function available. At least you should have a Motherboard CD/DVD to flash to original version of Bios.