Fried BIOS?

[GaryD]

I bought some older computers, and, in an effort to make the PII, 266 computers recognize an older but larger hard drive I had laying around, decided to upgrade the Award BIOS 4.51pg. I chose the next higher one, a "modular" something. Flashed the BIOS. Now, it just sits there. The power is on, no video card message, no POST, no beeps, no nothing. I read somewhere that you could "hot flash" a bios, to restore it to its original form, but no more was explained about it. Any suggestions, besides being more careful about flashing BIOSes? The local computer fixit shop looked at me like I had 3 eyes. Remove it - will it "revert" to normal? Removing CMOS battery and unplugging computer? Can I get a "new" old Award bios? Will a newer one work in that machine? (It's a local brand.)

[PrntRhd]

Welcome to the PC Guide forums.

I am afraid you may have made your MB a somewhat expensive paperweight, unless your MB comes with a replaceable BIOS chip.

I always urge caution when BIOS upgrades are discussed, any mistake or power interruption during the procedure is usually fatal.

[GaryD]

It IS a replaceable BIOS chip. I just want to know if I can do anything to reprogram it, or if there is a source for replacing these chips.

[pop pop]

Check the mobo web site for possible replacement sources for the chip. Generally, once you fried it, that's it, you have to replace it if that is an option. Consider yourself lucky that it IS replaceable.

[GaryD]

Well, never mind now. I thought I'd get "cute" and use a repair from the PC Guide Discussion Forum about "hot flashing" my dead BIOS. I booted an identical machine with a good bios, and then removed the good bios chip, and replaced it with the bad one, and ran the "repair" program. Well, lo and behold, it seemed to work. But, as we know, the DOS screen that appears briefly when you run a dos based program, too briefly, tells us that the app must be run from the dos prompt, without loading windows. Couldn't read it, but I bet that's what it said. So after I ran the program, I restarted the computer. Still nothing. So I decided to replace the good chip, go into the CMOS, save the cmos settings, and see if I could then run the program. Of course, at that point, nothing worked: keyboard, for example. So I rebooted with the good chip again. Went to dos prompt, A: drive, changed chips (while the computer was running). Noticed immediate heat change in chip. After about a minute, I looked at the chip, and noticed the foil on top curling up. Shut off the computer. Removed FRIED chip, replaced it with good one. Oh, well, at least I have plenty of replacement parts from the other one (unless I can find an Award 4.51pg chip somewhere).