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Home / WebSurfer Areas / WebSurfer Technical Stuff Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios.

Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) _MiSFiT_ Profile Anyone that has burned a copy of the newest bios file that has been modified to boot off the IDE controller on the mainboard can you please post what make/model/size IDE drive you used. (you can also post what else STARTED working that was not working properly with ORGIGINAL web surfer bios) -- That could be helpfull for allot of others. I would like to find out who it's working for and who it is not. If there is a problem with certain situations I don't know if I can fix it, but at least with some information it could be usefull. Thanks Again the file is available at http://www.geocities.com/d1v3rs1ty/ 05-02-2000 16:50:44

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) greghol Profile Hardware: 266MHz CPU OC to 300MHz 96MB (64+32), No DOC, Sony CDU4811 IDE on slave. Tried 2.1Gig IBM 2.5" w/win98, HP J2973A PCI LAN card 10bT. Misfit Files ------------ Oldbios (shipped with WSP) We know about this one. newbios cant find disk or some such message newbiosm dont work for me, says "press key to reboot" 4BIOS.ZIP file from diversity ----------------------------- 124c.bin IGS20XX BIOS v1.24c IGS Technology WORKS!!! Fixes my boot problem and PCI LAN card works now. Cant get into BIOS setup however. allview1.bin Allwell intro screen. Dont work for me. cant find disk. biosv10.bin IGS BIOS w/WSP intro screen WORKS! PCI LAN works. Setup works. wslogo.bin AWARD BIOS WORKS! PCI fixed. Setup works. Looks like old bios based on the USB selection. Thanks to all who provided and found the files. :) Greg 05-02-2000 23:38:19

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Spectrum greghol, Where did you get that 266mhz chip from and how much was it? 05-03-2000 00:42:56

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) _MiSFiT_ Hmm looks like I am going to have to do some testing with the new bios files from WebSurfer's site. I think my original thoughts were true, they fixed the shipping bios in the WebSurfer to be less compatible with certain things they had no interest in supporting in the unit. I bet the zip file with the multiple bios was provided by the OEM for them to base their unit off of. Each one I bet has something different or similar broke on it or something to show an example of for unit developers. (Like one might not have onboard LAN support, etc..) (One might not support IDE booting, etc..) One thing I have noticed from other reading is that your milage will vary from hard drive to hard drive. Now I just want to find out if any of these bios does def support LARGE HD's.. anything over 35 gigs.. 05-03-2000 03:39:28

Yeah and another thing... stuff. (modified 0 times) thnkgrn How are people flashing the WS bios without being able to boot up on the IDE controllers? Doing a hotswap ala IO? I wound up taking my WS back because I just got tired of trying different controllers that would work in PC' but would error out in the WS (failure to boot press any key)... that and just had to ask myself, How many systems do I need anyway? I mean really. If you have a need for them cool. If you have the spare cash and enjoy the hack, that rocks also. I mean if we really want to hack for the experience of it all, try slapping a FC-PIII into a Commodore 64. I am not flaming or anything. Believe me. I really enjoyed hacking my IO. But if you are like I am, I got caught up in the next great hack (WS) and just had to say... Why I am I doing this again? OUCH!!! Sound of my falling off of my soapbox and the nurse coming with an enema. 05-03-2000 12:17:21

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) bobs I installed the newbiosm.bin and now every time it boots I get an message PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT I am using the built in IDE and was booting w98 se before i did the update to the bios I was trying to get the pci nic card to work. I set everything as per the reame.txt file in the zip file. What do I do now. I can not boot to reflash the rom. 05-03-2000 15:35:26

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Brian IIRC, Greg has an eeprom burner, that's how he was able to test out all the bios files without fear of not being able to boot to reflash the bios. a wise move might be to turn the DOC into a bootable dos drive with flash utilities and all the bios files just in case you turn your WS into a doorstop by flashing a bios which won't allow an IDE controller to boot. as for your problem, try www.badflash.com, if you send him the right file and your bios, he can reflash it for you for (relatively) cheap. 05-03-2000 16:10:04

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) _MiSFiT_ I tested all the bios in the 4bios.zip file that were noted to work tonight with different PCI cards. Some of my PCI NIC's worked some did not. I did not get a chance to test other PCI devices. Like for instance my Compaq 10/100 card would only run with the bios I released, I could not get it to work on ANY of the 4bios files. Funny thing is windows reports it as a working device in EVERY case. (With the exeption of the one that does not allow you to enter setup, because it must set AUTO on pci configuration, which it automatically assigns the NIC the IRQ of the IDE, so it wont work because of that) As for your problem Bob, post what type of drive you have, make model, size. Try a different HD. It has been noted that even with the orginal bios there are certain IDE drive sizes that for whatever reason do not boot properly. Also MAKE SURE you have your configuration of PnP to manual and you set IRQ 10-15 as in use by ISA cards. (Exp if you have a PCI nic inplace) because it WILL take the IRQ of the IDE and make it NOT boot. 05-03-2000 21:32:16

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) _MiSFiT_ Oh and one other thing bobs.. You do realize worst case you can probably re-flash your eeprom in another motherboard that supports 2mbit eeproms. (Using a hot-swap method) If someone can verify doing this that would be cool. I can't remember off the top of my head what MB's have a DIP 2megabit eeprom, but I think my BE6-II might? 05-03-2000 21:37:15

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) bobs The Drive is a Maxtor diamondMAX 4320 type drive model 90648d3 cyl=1256 heads=16 sec=63 was working find. I have no PCI or ISA card in. Tried a WD 2g drive same problem. Which bios should I try to get my Intel PCI 10/100 nic working 05-04-2000 05:11:17

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Zonyl Do any of those BIOS images turn the floppy support back on? 05-04-2000 05:49:01

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) greghol Profile Zenyl: No :) Greg 05-04-2000 11:17:55

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Zonyl heh.. I was just thinking of sticking a floppy in the WS and booting off a disk seeing as the DOC is being a pain in linux. Maybe ill disassemble the image and see what I need to switch to get the fdc support back on. 05-04-2000 13:45:07

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Key5000 Hello _MiSFiT_ My WSP is working fine base on Original Bios, 80mb Ram, 10G IBM (lab top size), 3com ISA NIC card and CDRom. Whenever I plug in my PCI modem, the system boot to Win98 and when it detect to see the modem, the computer will lock up. After reading from WSP technical stuff, I go to http://www.geocities.com/d1v3rs1ty/ which have all instruction from you _MiSFiT_. After setting up the (original) Bios exacly as you said on the Readmenow.txt note. I start update the bios with file name NEWBIOS.BIN ( I do save the original bios to my D drive). After Bios update is finish, I press F1 to reboot the computer. The monitor display "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". I can not go further after that. Please HELP HELP HELP 05-05-2000 21:33:03

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Dr. Evil PLEASE read the readme that comes in the 4bios.zip. It CLEARLY states that with the new bios you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO BOOT OFF THE INTERNAL IDE! 05-05-2000 21:51:24

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Key5000 Dr.Evil, thanks for your respond. After I can not boot with the new bios name NEWBIOS.BIN. So I disable onboard bios and insert ISA controler to WSP then I be able to to window. After that I go to Dos then flash the bios with the name OLDBIOS.BIN (from _MiSFiT which does not have WSP logo. When it finish, I unplug the ISA controler and let it boot from internal IDE =====> It boot to window. I still have the problem with PCI which I can not use it for modem. ( I use ISA for LAN ) Please HELP HELP me to make my PCI modem working Thank you 05-05-2000 22:10:46

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) suggestion Key5000 -- why don't you shell out a few bucks for a PCI LAN card and use the hardware 56k modem that comes with the WSP? It's probably a better solution that your PCI modem, which might be a winmodem. With these boxes CPU cycles are at premium, i would rather my modem did most of the work than offload it to the CPU. any typos are due to the I-Opener keyboard ;) 05-05-2000 22:52:17

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) solder boy try the steps that i outline in the 274mhz thread. The trick is to let the internal IDE installed w/ least amound of conflicts. Then disable the secondary IDS, irq15. I had to reinstall win98 because I couldn't remove all traces of previous bad driver installs. Solder boy 05-06-2000 09:44:11

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) _MiSFiT_ Sorry I never got a chance to respond Key5000.. Been busy last several days Like you found the newbios.bin does not allow booting from internal IDE header, but newbiosm.bin does. newbiosm.bin is the SAME as newbios.bin I just found what in the bios file was keeping it from booting from the internal IDE port. Try that or try some of the bios file from the 4bios.zip file. Success varies from bios to bios. I myself have found I can use my compaq PCI Nic sucesfully with the newbiosm.bin file. All the others I have problems with windows and it. If your going to flash with one from the 4bios.zip try the allwell one first, that is the one out of all of them I had the BEST luck with. I think it is very close to the bios code the newbiosm.bin on, I extracted all the files and there very similar. I think allwell OEM's these units for allot of places and all the 4bios zip files were provided to the company that sold WebSurfer, for development purposes.. each bios file having possibly a difference so it can demonstrate the different limiations or give them a choice to which they distribute with there logo added in. 05-06-2000 10:52:44

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) key5000 Where can I find the 4bios.zip find? 05-06-2000 14:08:29

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) key5000 Never mind, I found the site for 4bios.zip Thanks for all the support on WSP hacked. 05-06-2000 14:12:04

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Key5000 I did flash the bios with Allwell from 4bios.zip and I did the same instruction as Solder Boy said in 274mhz thread but after computer boot up, the monitor display "Press any key to reboot" I can not go any further. I all of you have the different way to make PCI working, please let me know. Thanks 05-06-2000 18:21:50

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Hawk-I I'm stuck and need some input if possible. My setup: -Copied Win98 cabs/websurfer drivers/USB Zip and CDRW drivers to a 6.0GB 2.5" Toshiba HD -Installed Win98 and drivers on the Websurfer using as ChompUSA ISA controller -Installed a Promise66 controller (still booting through ISA) and loaded drivers -Tried switching over to the Promise controller and am told to load a system disk -Yanked DOC -> no boot -Went back to ISA controller and flased to newbios (not newbiosm) -Can now begin to boot through the Promise controller, but it hangs ~30 seconds into the boot process with the Win98 logo on screen and the HD Activity light stays on Talk about frustration. My goal is to be able to use a PCI IDE controller with the stock ISA modem. I don't think I'm up to adding the mobo IDE header, so any guesses on what else I might try would be appreciated. I can't understand why it will start booting fine and hang half way through?? 05-06-2000 18:56:32

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) _MiSFiT_ Hawk-I Did you also make sure to try disabling auto configuration of PNP in bios like I show in the docs that come with the bios files? INT10-15 should be set to in use by ISA, then your pci card will pick a lower IRQ when you turn it off then back on. That could be part of the problem possibly.. You didnt say weather you did that or not. 05-06-2000 21:00:31

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Hawk-I Thanks for the input _MiSFiT_. The only way I could squeeze off a boot with the Promise PCI controller was to disable EVERYTHING in the BIOS, including usb/sound/parallel/serial/ide. I checked what IRQ everything was using through the Win98 system info prog and the Promise controller was on 15. I tried to add back sound support using free IRQs but got explorer erros (not a hang) and the system crashed. System will also boot if IRQs 10-15 are reserved for ISA Legacy devices, but I have the same problem trying to enable usb/sound even if the IRQs they want are free. This is strange. I guess I'll try some of the other BIOS files floating around, seems like this is hit and miss. 05-07-2000 08:19:02

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Key5000 HELP HELP HELP I try to flash the bios to make it work for PCI: 1* Flash with Misfit bios =====> PCI not good 2* Flash with wslogo.bin from 4bios.zip =====> PCI not good 3* Flash with biosv10.bin from 4bios.zip ====> PCI not good 4* FLASH WITH 124C.BIN FROM 4BIOS.ZIP ====================> MONITOR DISPLAY " SYSTEM INITIALIZATION, PLEASE WAIT .... ", CAN NOT GO TO WINDOW, CAN NOT GET IN TO CMOS, CAN NOT FLASH BACK THE ORIGINAL BIOS, CAN NOT .... Is that any way we can flash the bios back to original bios? Is WSP dead? Can we make the WSP go back to normal so I can forget about PCI. Please HELP HELP 05-08-2000 21:49:33

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Hawk-I Did the same thing Key5000. Fortunately for me anyway, I've got 2 websurfers so i was able to swap bios chips to boot the thing, then hot swat and reflash the second chip. You need to find someone else with a websurfer or possibly with an ?Eprom burner? that I've heard mentioned. Your SWP is definantly not dead though! 05-09-2000 04:30:16

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) key5000 Hello Hawk-I, thanks for your respond. Can you give more instruction on how to get it back to live. I be able to borrow WSP from my friend so I do need your input. Waiting for your reply Hawk-I 05-09-2000 06:22:24

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Tinkerer Try pressing some keys while the message "system Initializing..." is displayed. I think i used the left control key and then it continued to normal booting. I may have held the control key down while the system was first booting up until past the "System Initializing..." prompt. I also did a hot swap with my friend's WSP another time i was stuck so that should work also. Just boot up your friend's WSP and when it is done booting, carefully pull out the bios chip, put yours in and flash it. Reboot to make sure it works, and then you're done. 05-09-2000 13:03:23

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) ttn2 Would like to see how many people have more than one device on the internal IDE. I have both my WSPs modified with internal IDE. Problem is that when I hook up both a harddrive and a cdrom drive the system refuses to boot. Without the cdrom both systems boot fine with 3 different harddrives. I have tried all the BIOSes available with no luck. The Allwell manual says that it only supports one device. Anyone that has successfully booted with 2 devices please let me know. Thanks. 05-09-2000 14:25:27

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) remove RemOvEthEdOcChiP 05-10-2000 00:53:57

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) ttn2 DOC already removed from both WSP. Tried it with and without it. 05-10-2000 06:34:59

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) key5000 Tinkerer, thanks for your solution. I used WSP from my friend and do a hot-swap the bios then flash the oldbios.bin back to my "Corrupted" bios. That enough for PCI, too much trouble to make it work. Tinkerer, let me know if you be able to make PCI working. 05-10-2000 06:56:51

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) key5000 To Ttn2: You have to set the 2nd device in CMOS to NONE then you will be able to use CDROM but you have to use oldbios.bin from MiSFiT. That is the way I did used on my WSP. 05-10-2000 07:02:08

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) ttn2 Key5000 I thought I tried that combination, but I will try it again. Did you enter the hard disk parameters or did it autodetect? 05-10-2000 07:49:15

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) key5000 Ttn2 In Cmos, I set Device 1 in Auto detect, Device 2 in None . Set HD in Master mode, CDRom in Slave mode. 05-10-2000 09:49:11

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) ttn2 Thanks for the input key5000. It was a flakey cdrom drive. Put on my trusty 2X and it worked fine. 05-10-2000 12:44:07

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) Thunder Good news/bad news: Either my bios chip is dead, or my programmer can't program it. I had some 4mb EPROMs sitting around, so I put 'newbiosm' into one and plugged it in. Good news: setup can now autodetect my Toshiba MK6409MAV 6.5GB 2.5" drive, which the original bios couldn't. [The original couldn't do squat with it.] Bad news: the bios doesn't like the fact that it in an EPROM and not a flash. It gives me 'unknown flash type.' But I think the new bios will work for me, when I either get a new chip or a new programmer. 05-10-2000 17:38:57

RE:Please Post Success or Failure with NEW modified to boot off Internal IDE Bios. (modified 0 times) as I recall Thunder- could be that an eprom lets you address it byte by byte whereas flash requires the whole thing in one go. My guess is that once you get the flash chip it should work fine. 05-10-2000 22:22:44

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