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Flashing the bios with out a burner.
A bios flash work around for people who don't have a eeprom burner.

New MessageFlashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) Locutus
I work as a Linux/Hardware tech at a small PC retailer.

As far as flashing the bios: After toasting a bios when I lost power while doing a bios upgrade I called the motherboard manufacturer to find out what I could do. There instructions suprised me but they worked.

1. Take a another motherboard that the bios chip would fit in ( I used another identical board but it might not have to be exactly the same board) boot it up.

2. Take out the bios chip from the running motherboard and replace with the chip that needs to be flashed.

3. Flash the bios.

4. Remove the flashed chip and put the original chip back in.

5. Replace bios in original board and see if it works.

I have done this my self and it worked fine just be careful about removing the bios chip from a running motherboard.

I take no responsibility if you toast anything. I just thought this might help some people.

Locutus

04-05-2000 17:57:04

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) Jim+Hearne
Unfortunatly most pc's still use a Bios in a DIP package whereas the Iopener bios is a PLCC, adaptors are available but they cost as much as the Iopener

JIM

04-06-2000 01:20:44

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) WouldBeHacker
Profile
At best, this seems risky. Removing a powered-on chip is generally a bad thing. If the boards were not the same, or at least VERY close to the same, I can't see how this would work. Once you take the bios you want to change and put in into another board, that board is now unable to do anything due to the "foriegn" bios in it.
04-06-2000 08:42:19

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) ThetaRadiation
Your procedure will work great! But is only needed if you can't boot.

The easiest way to reflash is to just:
Get or write a flash program for qnx
dial into the internet after modifing qnx (to not 'fix' the sandisk)
download the program and new bios
flash

Example code for a flash program (written in c, w/some asm) can be found at
http://www.ssti.com/products/sdriver/SST39SF020.txt

04-06-2000 09:00:03

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) ed......
I have also done this...it does work. But they were identical boards. I loosened the good chip as much as possible to allow the system to boot then pulled it & dropped in the 'bad' one and flashed. I have also "heard" you can 'piggy-back' the bad one on top of the good one and flash them both at once but have never tried. But i doubt you could go the 'piggy-back' route with the socketed chip in the i-opener anyways.
04-06-2000 16:24:41

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) BlakJak
Abit BH-6 seems to have PLCC Socket...Wonder if this will work?
04-06-2000 17:29:02

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) mahone
Profile
If you have a motherboard with a pin-compatible PLCC BIOS (I've got access to a BH6- I'll check the chip in the morning) you should be able to "hot-flash" the IO BIOS (works with other BIOSes anyway!). You just have to make sure that when you boot the "host" machine that it's set up to fully cache the BIOS to RAM (BIOS setting "System BIOS Cacheable" under "Chipset Features" I believe). It will copy the BIOS to system RAM during POST and then you can yank the "host" machine's BIOS chip and pop in the IO BIOS. Flash away (have to disable sernum checking in AWDFLASH to avoid an errormessage)...

My "unhackable" IO should be here (straight from NPLI- worth the extra $$$ if I can hack it!) within a few days, so I'll give it a try and post results if noone else beats me to it.

-M

04-07-2000 02:34:54

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) polarweasel
Profile
Your procedure will work great! But is only needed if you can't boot.

Which is most peoples' problem, no? Aren't the new ones (sorry, I'm a bit confused by all the conflicting reports...) rigged up to not allow shell access?

Example code for a flash program (written in c, w/some asm) can be found at http://www.ssti.com/products/sdriver/SST39SF020.txt

It's really nice code, easy to follow, from the random sampling I've taken of it.

Now is it just me, or should somebody have jumped all over this by now? Here we have sample BIOS flash code, and nobody has even commented on it!

Surely somebody out there can do something useful with this?

I don't have my IO yet, and perhaps never will given CC's latest news (no more orders taken in most stores), so I can be of only limited use here...

Just seems odd that nobody's gotten excited about this. Am I missing something?


pWeasel

04-07-2000 07:39:38

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) pofig37
>> Abit BH-6 seems to have PLCC Socket...Wonder if this will work?

IO BIOS chip is 5V reprogrammable, while most other chips require 12V. Check Abit's voltage specs before you attempt this or you might fry the chip.

04-07-2000 09:32:14

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) Jim Hearne
>At best, this seems risky. Removing a powered-on chip is generally a bad thing.
>If the boards were not the same, or at least VERY close to the same, I can't
>see how this would work. Once you take the bios you want to change and put in
>into another board, that board is now unable to do anything due to the
>"foriegn" bios in it.

It's common practice in computer shops, customers are always flashing thier bios with the wrong version.
It works even with a different motherboard because pc's (from 386's up) copy the Bios from the rom into Ram (because it faster) and then disable the rom.
So once the machines booted it's fairly safe to pull the normal rom and stick in a corrupted/new one.
A bit of ribbon cable with a header on one end and a ZIF socket on the other makes it even easier.

JIM

04-07-2000 10:03:54

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) mahone
polarweasel:

Likely the reason noone's jumped on compiling a QNX flasher is that in order to do so, you have to have the Watcom C distro for QNX and a PC dev kit as well (unless you can get someone who's already got an HD working on their IO to install the 100+ meg Watcom C distro). I was poking around on QNX's site and I believe that particular package was around $995. Ouch! Too bad nobody's ported GCC to QNX- then it's not much of an issue.

-M

04-07-2000 16:20:38

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) dgc1
Actually gcc is "partially" available for QNX; you still have to use the Watcom libraries & linker.

The following URL mentions it.
http://www.schoenbrun.com/mba/faq.htm

04-07-2000 17:39:05

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) mahone
Like I said, GCC's not available for QNX. ;)

I know there have been several documented efforts to port it, but the quote from the same QNX FAQ was "In general, once developers start using Watcom C/C++, demand for GCC isn't as high. Watcom provides a very good, high quality C and C++ development environment"

A free compiler's not much good without a free linker to go with it. :)

-M

04-08-2000 18:39:08

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) Gordon
Profile
I succeeded in flashing the original IO BIOS into a PLCC chip in my BH6. But I couldn't write to the IO BIOS chip. Instead I wrote to a spare BH6 chip.

AwFlash v7.58 does not like the IO BIOS file I downloaded from alt.binaries.misc. But by adding the /f command (telling it to use flash routines in the original BIOS), I was able to force it to write to the chip.

I posted more details to a new thread in the old Technical area of this board.

04-08-2000 18:58:04

New MessageIt works - :Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) i-whatever
I have an "old" iopener which admittedly helped a lot...

I used the awdflash utility to save a backup copy of the working iopener's bios. I then CAREFULLY pulled the bios out of my working iopener and replaced it (once all the goo was scraped off - another "be careful" item) with the "new" (unbootable) bios.

Ran awdflash again and had it flash this chip with the saved bios.

Both machines work fine, now. Just be careful when yanking the chip out when the machine is on. A VERY narrow screwdriver works best. Do not apply too much force to the socket, as it is brittle plastic and WILL break quite easily.

Not for the faint of heart... coulda toasted this thing, I got lucky.

Also, make sure your bios is cached (you can check this in setup) before you do this.

04-10-2000 19:24:24

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) Sigmaz
Hey I-Whatever I know I shouldnt ask But is there a wasy I can get a copy of the origional image from you?
I have been poking around for quite a while now and I give up.. I just cant get this thing to boot.. so Umm can ya help me.. Hu? HU?..
thanks
sigmaz@mytalk.com
04-18-2000 22:34:15

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) troy
copyright troll.
04-19-2000 01:19:05

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) TroyIsAWanker
Geeknews.com has/had a link to the old BIOS image. Search there for "BIOS"... Oh hell, here:

http://ellis.phester.org/files/io256kbios.bin

04-19-2000 02:18:52

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) mew2
Profile
I have a goo'd BIOS, non-cut IDE AND a BH6 v1.1.

1) Removed Goo & BIOS Chip
2) Booted BH6 from floppy with no himem stuff loaded
3) Popped out the BH6 BIOS
4) Popped in the IO BIOS
5) Flash'd BIOS with latest BH6 BIOS
6) Flash'd BIOS with Old IO BIOS using /F switch

/F is needed to flash the chip with a BIOS from a different machine. The AWDFLASH progy complains otherwise that the IO.bin isn't correct for this machine.

7) Powered off BH6
8) Put BIOS's back in their correct machines
9) Booted IO with 1999 BIOS and BH6 with it's BIOS.

Now all I need are my HDD cable parts!!!

L8r

mew2

04-19-2000 13:16:08

New MessageRE:Flashing the bios with out a burner. (modified 0 times) Just_Do_It
In case someone missed this...

How to downgrade your bios: v1.7

THIS IS FOR VIRGIN I-OPENER's ONLY - If u phoned home don't try this.

To get a downgrade of your bios image follow these easy instructions
-------
#Turn off the turorial
dsmod -v -d nvram -e device -a .firstBoot -n 0

#Secure root
dsmod -v -d nvram -e startup -a .first -c -s "shadow"
dsmod -v -d nvram -e startup -a shadow -c -s "echo root::925158644:0:0>/etc/shadow"

#Change 1st dialup session - YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD MUST BE ONLY LETTERS AND NUMBERS
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup0 -a .number -s "5551212"
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup0 -a .user -s "username"
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup0 -a .password -s "password"

#Change 2nd dialup session - YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD MUST BE ONLY LETTERS AND NUMBERS
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup1 -a .number -s "5551212"
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup1 -a .user -s "username"
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup1 -a .password -s "password"

#If you need to dial X to get out replace "" with "X"
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup0 -a .dial_prefix -s ""
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup1 -a .dial_prefix -s ""

#Turn on the speakers
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup0 -a .speaker -n 1
dsmod -v -d nvram -e dialup1 -a .speaker -n 1

#Stop it from calling home
dsmod -v -d nvram -e network -a .loginHost0 -s "127.0.0.1"
dsmod -v -d nvram -e network -a .loginHost1 -s "127.0.0.1"
-------
If you do not care about getting a possible update you can skip this section
-------
Ok..now you can get online. First thing you want to do is make sure you don't have
a phone cable plugged in. When you restart it will try to update the i-opener. Hit shift,
You'll need it later Get a qnx prompt and type in: ps | grep updated | grep -v grep. This
will give you the pid's of the update daemons. Type in: kill -9 <PID>. Do this for BOTH
of them. Once your done plug the phone line back in. Wait til it dials in then
type in these commands:
-------
ftp
open ftp.i-opener-linux.net
ftp
none@whocares.com
binary
lcd /app
get full.tar.gz
bye
cd /app
gzip -d full.tar.gz
tar -xvf full.tar
mv bios_image_256k.bin newbios.bin
chmod +x qnxflash
-------
That will grab a WORKING copy of the old bios and the bios flasher off of the ftp server.
Now to actually flash the bios.
Type in: ./qnxflash -i
This should kick out some info. If it errors then do NOT attempt to update it.
Rip a backup bios image with: ./qnxflash -r bios.bin
Verify it: ./qnxflash -v bios.bin
You should get no errors. Now to actually overwrite the bios. Turn back now. I am not
responsible if you fry your i-opener
./qnxflash -w newbios.bin
Verify this: ./qnxflash -v newbios.bin

If you do not get ANY errors with that last command pull the plug and you are done.
If you GET an error try again. If it happens again try ./qnxflash -d -w newbios.bin
to FORCE an overwrite. If that doesnt work write your old bios back: ./qnxflash -w bios.bin
If that doesnt work take the bios out and send it to badflash.com cause man..its gone.
-------

Thats it. Hopefully it worked.

04-21-2000 07:18:04

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