C'Mon guys, hasn't anybody experienced this before?
Badflash.com can arrange a new flash chip. You can also get
a flash chip from Asus, but they may send it by mail, which
means it would take a while. The chip itself can be amazingly
cheap (about $2.50 or so for a blank), so most of the price
is for the programming effort. (For removal of the old chip,
it helps to have a U shaped removal tool. The tool fits the
chip on diagonal corners, and has two "lips" that fit under
the chip, and make it easy to remove. Radio Shack has a tool
for $10 to do this, and some companies that sell replacement
BIOS, throw in a cheap version of the Radio Shack tool. You
can remove the chip with a pointed tool, but be careful not
to bend any pins.)
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog_name=CTLG&product_id=276-2101
There are recovery techniques, but I've received very little
positive feedback. You can try the "boot block" method, which
is a blind flash attempted with a DOS boot disk and a one line
..ini file with the flash command in it. That requires that the
current BIOS is attempting to access the floppy (which seldom
happens). Another method is the "hot flash" method, where you
take your duff flash chip to a friend's computer which is already
booted from the DOS flashing floppy diskette, pull his chip out
of the socket *hot* and plug in your chip. You then flash your
chip. The assumption in this case, is that the BIOS is already
mirrored in RAM, and that is why you can get away with swapping
chips.
Plugging a PLCC into a socket hot, can be difficult to do, and
if the chip gets rotated, the wrong pins can make contact. I've
read reports of power pins making contact and glowing because
they got so hot. I've plugged in a few hundred of these things,
and I wouldn't consider trying a hot flash, because the PLCC can
slide out of your fingers so easily.
A BIOS Savior would have made this failure easy to recover from,
but like insurance, would be a waste of time as a recovery plan
from your current situation. (It is a device that gives you
two flash chips, with a switch to select between them.)
So, badflash.com will give you a fast turnaround on a new chip,
and then you can consider a BIOS Savior as a $25 addition to
your computer, if you think this will be happening again.
BTW - when messing with the BIOS, if you are greeted by the
"please stuff the floppy/CD in the drive, as the BIOS is
corrupt", the correct response is to power down. If power
cycling it is not enough, then power down, pull the plug,
and clear the CMOS is the next step (see procedure in the
manual). A computer that is messed up enough to claim its
BIOS is corrupt, is likely not a good candidate for some
automatic flashing. Clearing CMOS will give you a chance to
return the computer to nominal settings, which will improve
things if in fact the BIOS really does need to be flashed.
Giving it the floppy/CD is the last thing you want to try,
until you've tried everything else.
On at least one recent motherboard, the automatic flash option
is instant death, due to an issue with the automatic flashing
code on the originally shipping BIOS. It can pay to check the
download page on the Asus web site, and check to see if the
"More" link for any of the BIOS files, mentions certain BIOS
flashing options that are not to be used. A lot of this has
to do with the boot block in the BIOS having bugs in it.
Sometimes only one method of flashing the BIOS is safe for
updating the BIOS, and that is why checking the web site
is a must, before doing anything to the flash.
HTH,
Paul
