What not to do in BIOS when you're BORED

[Himself]

I think of it in the same like as picking at a scab, it's just so irresistably there you can't help yourself. It's not terribly smart of logical but it bugs you until you do it anyway.

[Muad'Dib]

Ahhh, thank god Jord didn't get here yet.... I had the same thing happen to me a little while back when I flashed my bios. Did it with a 107 fsb and when it finished, some strange stuff happened. Long story short (sorry for the pun ), ripping out my battery solved the problem (even after Jord went through a long description of how to reflash it with a bios boot disk cause we thought I killed it in the flash).

As long as you mentioned the power supply issue Chhas, try plugging the power supply into a floppy drive (or anything that is not expensive) the wrong direction. FIREWORKS!!! Although, the black wires that should be toegether are the ground (on MY old one at least ), so putting two and two together (damn, I'm just full of aweful puns today!)....

Dimitri

[CHHAS]

Oh yeah, Dimitri, I remember your problems, your posts had *PANIC* written all over them

While we're at it, has anyone ever fried something with static electricity ?



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P3 500, 224 MB ram, G400 16SH,
Maxtor DM 40+ 30GB, IBM Deskstar 16GP 10GB, Maxtor 4320 13 GB
SB Live Value

[cancer]

CHHAS talking about sticking the atx power leads the wrong way around, i did something similar with an old pentium txpro motherboard (i think). anyway i was giving this motherboard to a friend of mine who i conviced needed a upgrade + old pentium 90 (that was my third system, my first 2 were an 286 & 486sx). so there i was thinking i was doing him a favour buy donating my old stuff and putting it together for him. then after putting everything in the box i connected the power leads, the wrong way around! i turned it on and nothing happened other than the faint smell of ozone coming off the fried silicon, oops... the poor guy thinking he was getting a free upgrade had to dish out for a new motherboard so the thing worked. this time i got them the right way round, the black grounds wires in the middle. i learnt a valuable lesson that day, don't do your friends any favours, it'll just cost 'em in the long run & the black wires go in the middle. still i was relieved the day that the powers that be in pc heaven gave us one-way directional plugs...amen.
Cheers.


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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[cancer]

ok thanks IceStorm, i guess through the process of elimination the culprit was the memory timings that screwed the pooch, next time i'll leave it on auto...
so a new bios is out for the asus p3v4x, cool. anything new & is it any good?
cheers.


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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[merchant2112]

cancer you think that was scarey? try this. i poped the cover off my two week old atalon and got careless with a screw driver when i was trying to remove the metal clips (i scraped off a capasitor on my cpu) to add to my panic when i finished modifying the cpu to 650 and tryed getting it to boot up i got a blank screen (i had yet to see the missing cap (witch i replaced with one off my 300a) pluged it back in and blank screen on boot. (can you say i was really sweating now) turned out the cpu wasn't fully seated.

[Technoid]

Installed a new 13GB Quantum HDD in a customers computer...
It diden't had enough powerconectors so i got an divider, conected.
Said "Fire in the Hall" pressed the powerbutton.....
FIRE
The divider had a faulty assembled conector (the red and yellow switced).
The new harddrive was scrap and it was the last 13gb we had.

Later i had fun trying to convince the old Quantum bigfoot to work with the new 8.4GB quantum drive

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INTEL PIII550 MSI 6163
G400Mill 32MB SGRAM + RRG
SBlive
256 MB RAM CAS2
43GB HDD Space!(Actual 40GB) (13+30 Quantum drives)
Pioneer 104S DVD 10x CD 40x SLOT IN
SONY CRX100E 4/2/24 CDRW

[moreau]

"Fire in the hole"

Anyway. Since everyone is sharing...

A while back, my father-in-law bought a new mobo (FIC PA-2013) and processor. I convince him that before we assemble and install anything that we should flash to the latest bios. He is hesitant. "I've never needed to flash a bios before". "It'll be OK." I tell him. " I've flashed my bioses a dozen times before, with no problems". which was entirely true.

So, in my basement, we go online (using my computer), download the latest bios from the FIC site, make a disk, flash, boot, and...


nothing. Well, not exaclty nothing. There was an incessant beeping from a lobotamized motherboard.

Luckily, my FIL was a good sport (he is a fellow computer geek). He told me just to keep the board until I figured it out, and bring it to him then.

Well, what do I do? I start reading tech support at the FIC web site. It says, well, you may have to buy a new bios chip. Unless you chip is hardwired, in which case, you need a new motherboard. I then changed my underware.

Still more digging yielded a must frustrating discovery. There were 4 different bios chips used on that mobo. The one used on this one, required a separate, undocumented bios flash utility and a different image file! Wow was I annoyed. About this time I read about the boot block, and so found one of my father-in-laws old ISA vid cards, and well, after a few different image versions, found one that would make the computer live again.

I'm sure those of you posting to this thread can appreciate the feeling you get when you see the memory test start, when all you have seen for 4 days is black screens with beeping.

[This message has been edited by moreau (edited 21 April 2000).]

[Brian R.]

Better than sex

[moreau]

Try both before you say that! (Just Kidding!)

C'mon, nothing is better than sex!

[Jake]

Are you sure?

I mean BEER is pretty damn good!

Naaaahhh you are right, sex is better!

[Frankfurt]

Well, ive got something...one day i started up my computer...noticed that the new harddrive i had purchased didnt have the power connector in it, so i decided ill just plug it in and keep going (WHILE THE COMPUTER WAS ON). Well after it was plugged in, the computer just sorta shut down. But fortunately when i restarted it, it ran with no problems and the new hard drive was actually detected
That was a close call.

Frankfurt

[cancer]

we may have to start our own pilot for tv called 'funniest home computer f*$# ups'

with the

Better than sex

&

I mean BEER is pretty damn good!

thing, i'd like to add something called garfield syndrome. we are all familiar with the comic strip? our fat ginger cat has a conundrum, he's sitting in front of a bowl of yummy cat slop (generally called wiskers) and he's real hungry but he's also tired too. what does one do you ask? for our furry friend the solution was simple, he simply fell asleep in his food bowl!
to expand on this situation, why not cram all three things in at once (beer, sex & getting your bios to work)? it could prove to be a logistical challenge though...
cheers.


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Aopen HX08 full tower case, Asus P3V4X bios 1.03, P!!! FC-PGA 550e @733, 160M pc100 sdram, Matrox G400MAX bios 1.4 PDesk 5.52.015, Seagate 28.5G Ultra ATA66 7200rpm HD, Pioneer 103s DVD 6X/32X drive, SB AWE64 Gold ISA sound card, SMC pci ethernet adaptor, Castlewood Orb 2.2G media drive, Nortel 100 cable modem, Mitsubishi 1995 19in monitor, occasionally use dualhead for dvd on a Sony 80cm Wega TV, MS natural keyboard, MS Intellimouse Explorer,
Win98SE 4.10.2222A, DX7a.

[Raptor^]

LOL.. we had a good one at work just after Christmas

We had a brand new SGI 320 that had been out in the states for some demos we were doing.

Brought it back to the UK and plugged it in without switching the voltage back to 230V.. the power supply fan blew the sparks out all over the desk

I took the machine apart, but the PSU was just a load of melted gloop and a couple of chips were missing inside. That machine needed new psu, m/board and RAM (SGI ram is expensive too) be4 it worked again:P

[glarec]

heh, i guess i can add something of my own. the latest of many i can remember is with my bp6 board. i was installing the bp6 board and had problem to get it post. so i kept screwing and unscrewing the mobo to see if there's anything shorting the mobo (trust me if you dont' know what i am talking about.. i had a computer refuse to boot once because i screw all 4 screws of a floppy drive. after taking out this 1 particular screw.. the system boots :P ). after i managed to solve that problem.. i decide to screw the mobo back in with all the screws. well.. i forgot to pull the ps cord out (well.. i kinda left it in because i thought that didn't matter with the system powered off. well, while i was screwing the screw in.. the screwdriver slipped and i accidentally touch one of the circuit and instantly saw some sparks and smoke came with it (and you think the rocket launcher's smoke trail was neat :P ). well.. for some reason the board still worked. but since i bought it local.. i took it back, claiming it's defective and got a new one :P

moral of the story.. keep your receipt and try to buy things local if you can