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Home / Other I-Appliances / Intel dot.station Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. It can be done

Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email I have an affiliate that does a lot of laptop work and replaces soldered bios chips for a reasonable price. You would send him your motherboard, and it would be returned with a properly programmed chip in a socket, assuming the clearance on the board permits. He thinks the labor would be around $30, socket a couple of bucks, and shipping around $10. He's pretty sure he can re-use the chip. The guy's good. I've used him myself on a bashed laptop. I'll try to firm things up if anyone is interested. If someone has a clean bios image copies from a hackable system, I'd appreciate a copy. I can splice together the intel files if I have to, but I'd prefer not. Feel free to e-mail me on this if you are interested. I don't want to clutter up the board with a bunch of "me too" or "heck no" sorts of responses. 06-09-2003 07:38:00

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email Please E-Mail Joe at contact@laptopbios.com and use the subject line: "Badflash Deal for Intel.dot Station" and make arrangements. The deal is that you remove the board and send it to him. He is not going to take the system apart and put it back together for you. We also can't affort to mail a 50 pound brick for any reaonable sum. You remove the board, pack it do it doen't get smashed on the way, he will remove & program the chip and replace, hopefully in a socket. Until we do one or two, we won't know if that is possible. I'll post updates as I get them 06-09-2003 08:13:55

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) wvgeo Profile I have contacted Joe to have the BIOS in my dot.bob replace/reprogrammed; I've decided to be a guinea pig for this. If you guys want to wait to see how it comes out, I'll post the results when I get the motherboard back. The estimated cost that Badflash quoted is less than the price of an Intel motherboard that would still have to have the video and audio connectors modified. I know this for a fact because I purchased an Intel 810 MB (~$50) with the intention of modifying it to fit into my dot.bob. However, I am a poor solderer and would probably turn it into an expensive coaster. If Joe is able to reprogram my BIOS, I'll sell my extra MB to recoup the costs. Keep you posted. Dan 06-09-2003 09:42:29

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile BadFlash, I have a Dot that I already socketed the BIOS on. I don't, however, have a good BIOS image, other than the Intel updater with multi-part BIOS flies that was posted in the Spanish forum. If you have a good BIOS image and just want to try flashing it to see if it will work I'm game. Kludgemeister 06-09-2003 12:31:08

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email I don't have a good image yet. We are working on splicing this intel mess together into a workable image. If anyone has a Tiger Unit, could they please copy out the bios file using Uniflash or AWDFlash? It would be a lot more of a sure bet if we had an image we knew was good. 06-09-2003 12:54:29

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) VooD Profile Hereīs the ABAZ bios extracted from my uncapped dotstation using amiflash: http://www.linux-hacker.net/~jsmmd/files/bios/mb/dotstationbios.zip 06-10-2003 06:58:31

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email Thanks VooD! Muchly appreciated. 06-11-2003 18:19:00

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Anyone sent off their board and get it back? 06-20-2003 16:50:47

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile jsmmd, Badflash sent me an SST BIOS chip flashed with abazvood.bin which I tested in my socketed Dot motherboard, but unfortunately it wasn't bootable. It did go through POST and detect the hard drive, but froze there and did not complete the boot. I have returned the SST chip, along with a couple of blank Intel 82802AB chips for further experimentation. Best regards, and welcome back! Kludgemeister 06-20-2003 23:00:56

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Kludgemeister, P04 and P05 should work perfectly, but then so should the abazvood. Oh well... Have you instructed them on what to flash on the different chips. Just wondering.... thanks... 06-21-2003 23:06:25

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile Yes, Badflash is going to flash abazvood.bin and p04.bin onto the two 82802AB chips for me to try. I think this is the first time anyone has actually tried the single binfiles that VooD has produced in a machine. Our BP Micro programmer at work is too old to handle the 82802AB, but if/when we ever get a new module for it, I'm interested to see how it would handle the Intel firmware hubs, since the Intel BIOS updates all came in the 64k chunks rather than a single 512k file. Kludgemeister 06-22-2003 09:40:28

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email The SST chip was an experiment. Many times bios chips require a specific chip to work. We'll see what happens with the N82802AB. The PO4 and VooD image are on the way back to Kludgemeister and he'll keep us posted. 06-22-2003 09:43:49

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) wvgeo Profile Recieved my socketed/reprogrammed motherboard back from Joe on Thursday, 6-19-03, but haven't had time to reinstall it. Will reinstall it this evening along with a different hard drive with Win 98 loaded to see if it boots. I will post the results as soon as I know something. The total cost for this procedure was $30 plus shipping. This is still cheaper than buying a Dot.Station from Tiger ($100.00 from boB + $38.00 from Joe, $159.00 + shipping from Tiger) if it works. Dan 06-23-2003 06:40:30

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) wvgeo Profile Installed the motherboard last night along with a 400Mhz Celeron, 256MB RAM, and 40GB drive with Win98 loaded. Turned the dot.bob on and got an Intel splash screen and then it booted into Win 98. SUCCESS! The socketed/reprogrammed BIOS from Joe worked! As if there was any doubt. If anyone with a locked Dot.Station (dot.bob) wants to run another OS, E-Mail Joe at contact@laptopbios.com and use the subject line: "Badflash Deal for Intel.dot Station" and make arrangements. He has quick turnaround and the work is professional, the socket looks like it was installed at the factory. I highly recommend him. Thanks Joe, and a big thank you to BadFlash for hooking us up with him. Dan 06-24-2003 06:42:25

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile Great news, wvgeo! And a great job by Joe! Which BIOS did Joe use? Or did Badflash do the BIOS for him? In either case, it would be great to know which BIOS image is in the thing. I have several socketed boards just waiting for a usable BIOS! BTW did you have a chance to see if the Dot.Joe will boot off a CD-ROM or a USB device? Kludgemeister 06-24-2003 10:50:00

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile Is it a safe assumption that this chip can be re-flashed using the other Intel bios images?? (Also, I passed on the sucess to bob. Figured he like to hear that something is possible.) 06-24-2003 11:12:03

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) BadFlash Profile | Email ABAZVOOD.BIN is the file I sent to Joe. I have a couple of chips on the way to Kludgemeister and one has the p04.bin in it. We'll have to wait a day or too for that report. 06-24-2003 16:38:47

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) TheBigDog Profile Kludgemeister, please let us know the p04 result. I am gonna send mine in soon but I would like to hear your result and maybe choose which BIOS image to flash to. Thx in advance. 06-26-2003 18:56:36

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 1 times) Kludgemeister Profile The p04 and abazvood BIOS's came today, both burned on 82802AB chips. Both work in the Dot.bob motherboard. p04 tries to boot into PXE first, and takes quite a while to start Windows98 even after it turns to the hard drive. abazvood does not try PXE, but goes right to the hard drive. Win98 also loads much faster with abazvood. The bad news (for me) is that abazvood will not boot the Box motherboard that I fried the BIOS on. I will need to get a dupe of the Box BIOS for that one. This is just a very preliminary report--I have not hooked up the CDROM yet, and I will need to wait until tomorrow to borrow a USB floppy drive. More results after the weekend (my wife and I are going away for a couple of days for our 18th anniversary, so the Dot is not highest on my priority list until next week. Mad props to VooD and Badflash, who made this possible! The Joe/Badflash BIOS upgrade is definitely the way to go, and abazvood seems to be the sweet BIOS to use. Kludgemeister 06-27-2003 00:04:03

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Curious Profile So the consensus is that you have to replace the soldered chip with a socket. No way to flash the soldered bios chip as of yet? 06-27-2003 13:54:35

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 1 times) Kludgemeister Profile Curious, Unless/until the Linux guys can pull a rabbit out of their hat, that is the case. Any solution at the current time will involve rework of a board--socketing the BIOS on a Dot motherboard, or removing/replacing back panel connectors on the BOXD810EMO motherboards that are showing up on eBay. The BOX motherboards are attractive in that they have video cache and ATA/66 hard drive controllers. They have soundcard circuitry onboard, so with some internal rewiring of the Dot cable harness the speakers and mic can still be used (in the Spanish Dots the modem seems to be part of the audio circuitry.) Kludgemeister 06-27-2003 18:16:14

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) VooD Profile wow, iīm glad to read these news :) 06-28-2003 16:57:26

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile I put a picture of my socketed BIOS at http://www.rickadee.net/~zephyrus/dot/socket-bios.jpg I did this myself, but Joe's work will be similar. VooD, ĄMuchas Gracias! for capturing the BIOS image. Kludgemeister 06-29-2003 00:35:03

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) VooD Profile :) Looks very professional. Now the last question is...will Amiflash allow to flash those socketed bios with my modified bios (those with new cpu support) or another bios or the intel write protection still enabled? 06-29-2003 03:52:56

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) VooD Profile BTW I donīt suggest you to use p04 bios, or any other intel update because the only known Bios with USB CDROM boot support is the ABAZ one :P 06-29-2003 04:02:24

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) TheBigDog Profile What's the max CPU speed that's supported by ABAZ BIOS? 06-29-2003 13:29:40

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) VooD Profile I think I posted the answer on another thread about bioses. I donīt remember right now. All I can tell you now is that a 1 ghz celeron works fine, but you have to mod your motherboard (join two points) in order to get the 100mhz bus. 06-29-2003 14:02:26

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) PeteC Profile Just got mine MB back today. Excellent job that Joe did! Thanks again. Very professional like it was always there! 07-03-2003 15:09:36

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) PeteC Profile For time being just testing board while out of it's case on workbench. I have a dot.bob. Get post with CPU and memory which came with it fine. Tried to boot with a PIII 550Mhz..no luck yet...no post. What and where is the mod to get 100Mhz? 07-04-2003 09:08:47

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) PeteC Profile It appears to mod FSB to 100Mhz from 66Mhz you have to put a 1k resister at the R8J8 location. Are all of the DOT.Bobs running at 66Mhz? 07-04-2003 09:39:08

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile PeteC, I wonder about the R8J8. I have two BOXD810EMO boards, and they are supposed to run at 66/100/133MHz (a0065301.pdf says "The host bus frequency is automatically selected") based on the CPU installed, and do not have a resistor at R8J8. But I haven't tried putting in a faster CPU so I can't test this now. Kludgemeister 07-05-2003 12:58:04

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) VooD Profile I bought and opened two different SubastasPC Dotstations, a c300 and a c1000 (the fsb mod was done before shipping), and the resistance (or just solder both points) is needed to get a 100fsb bus, otherwise it is stuck at 66. I think that "jumper" turns on fsb autodetect on the mobo, since I removed my c1000 and changed by a c700 (66 fsb) and the mobo was able to use the correct FSB with no other modification. 07-05-2003 17:27:27

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) PeteC Profile I was able to get the 550Mhz to boot using a LIN LIN Slocket adapter. So VooD all I need is to solder/jumper R8J8 to get the auto 66/100 FSB? 07-05-2003 17:49:01

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile DANGER, DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! and apologies in advance for continuing this thread here when it should really be in the "FSB Frequency" thread. The Dot.Bob motherboard is not the same as the AOL motherboard! A picture of the AOL motherboard with R8J3 (not R8J8!) circled is at http://www.vegazone.com/aol/aolfotos/aol1000mod.jpg A picture of the Dot.Bob motherboard corner is at http://www.rickadee.net/~zephyrus/dot/bob_corner.jpg and a picture of the BOXD810EMO motherboard corner is at http://www.rickadee.net/~zephyrus/dot/box_corner.jpg The Box motherboard is closer to the AOL motherboard, and does have R8J3 populated, but not R8J8 (but I am not clear from the VegaZone discussion which is the important one...) The Dot.Bob motherboard has a different arrangement entirely (disclaimer: I'm not a sparky and haven't done any circuit tracing) If R8J3 is the important pull-up resistor for the FSB switching, the "aftermarket" Box motherboard is already capable. I wouldn't know what to do with the Dot.Bob motherboard at this point. Kludgemeister 07-05-2003 23:04:49

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile From the VegaZone discussion at http://www.vegazone.com/upb1_9/viewtopic.php?id=5&t_id=3 not all AOL motherboards are alike either. Maybe some are like the Dot.Bob? Kludgemeister 07-05-2003 23:13:02

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) zxhwk Profile | Email I have gotten my motherboard(inteldot) back this morning and now just tried to fire it up after the bios replacement that you had recommended . Well the case is that now the motherboard is completely dead and not worth a dam and JOE tells me he will fix it if i send it back if i pay shipping this isnt right why should i pay shipping on a product that worked fine before and now it doesnt. 07-10-2003 12:08:34

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile zxhwk, If you had a Dot.Bob motherboard, it couldn't have been working fine before the BIOS change, since they have a locked BIOS and will only boot to the Spanish ISP screen with the original hard drive. The ABAZ BIOS fixes that, and allows you to use any operating system you want. I can verify that works. If you had a different Dot version that was already working, you needed no BIOS change in the first place. For example, the BOXD810EMO boards sold on eBay and from NWTech in Washington have the P04 BIOS and work fine on their own, but will not boot with the ABAZ BIOS (I tried that also.) What machine were you starting with? Kludgemeister 07-10-2003 12:43:30

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) LaptopBIOScom Profile "Well the case is that now the motherboard is completely dead and not worth a dam and JOE tells me he will fix it if i send it back if i pay shipping this isnt right why should i pay shipping on a product that worked fine before and now it doesnt." I offered a full refund for the BIOS work if he sent the motherboard back to me to test / verify. he does not want to spend the time and $4 to send it back. The ONLY time a BIOS will not allow a system to power on is when the BIOS EEPROM is damaged or severely corrupt. All BIOS work here is double checked for accuracy and the socket is checked 3 times for insertion and removal consistancy. If the BIOS EEPROM is indeed damaged (which is a possibility) I would discover that if he would simply send the motherboard back for testing. All it takes is a little cooperation. Joe @ LaptopBIOS.com 07-10-2003 13:40:00

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile zxhwk, Can you describe what the board is and isn't doing? -me jsmmd / MethodicJon 07-10-2003 19:47:23

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) zxhwk Profile | Email As I was doing some more testing I found that the powersupply header for the chassis fan would work and the Power supply header for the cpu fan would loose the ground signal during the initial push of the power button and would turn the fan control supply off. This in turn would tell the gate to turn the supply power for the processor to also turn off. This stumped me for a while since I started to trace the supply .7volts that is needed to turn the chip on i traced it back to the bios which as you know also turns the machine on and off. As I inspected the bios I found 2 loose solider connections close to the bios chip that was replaced and with more inspection I also found a burn trace on the secondary circuitboard control switch some how or another I am still stumped I dont know what caused this and it still wouldnt work with all the original controls installed. After I completed the necessary resolider joints. I then tried to fire it up with an external supply. I was able to get the supply to fire on the cpufan but still no video. I then remembered that at one time they made a pc66 SDRAM 64 meg and I had one so I would try it. Well what do you know the machine fired and I had video , then got the bios screen. Everything seems to be fine but this isnt right because I wanted to use the at least 128 meg pc100 SDRAM. I did a shutdown then put the 128meg in and it worked. Sounds good so far but I didnt get my hopes up yet had one more thing to try. I then shutdown and removed powersupply from board. As I had expected the board was dead again and still no video. I then put the memory pc66 chip back in and it fired up again. I did theis at least a dozen times to make sure I wasnt doing anything different each time. I was correct the board would accept larger processor and memory chips as long as I wouldnt remove the powersupply completely from the board. If power remained I was able to get it to accept a 1050 celeron chip at (100FSB) with 256meg pc100 ram to workas long as I didnt remove power. I am still trying to figure out why this is but at this time of night i gave up and needed a break from it so maybe more later if i can figure this one out. 07-11-2003 20:50:31

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email Is there a CMOS battery for these things? If so, check to make sure the battery has juice and is still hooked up properly. With all the board reworking done, something might have been cut here. Many BIOSes, if they detect a corrupt CMOS, will re-initialize the CMOS with the most conservative settings, and then try to start up with the conservative hardware profile; and then let the user optimize the settings as appropriate. -WP 07-14-2003 21:21:00

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) zxhwk Profile | Email I have tried everything i can think of and still noting responds and fires up after the main power is removed it seems that their is a glitch in the cmos because when i got it to fire again the bios came up but missing half of the screen so as of now i give up and am going to put it in the closet for a long sleep until i can find a cure for it. I also got hold of a 50pin cable for the second ide plug and when i put a cd drive on it it toasted and burned the ribbion cable so at this oint i give. Hope you all have much better luck than I Have wonderful day 07-23-2003 08:36:39

RE:Bios Chip Replacement for soldered chip. (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile After my recent experience with one of my two machines, I'm inclined to think that it's more likely some design problem of the unit. Mine just fried for no good reason... jsmmd / MethodicJon 07-23-2003 09:31:52

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