GA-7IXE4 k7 support

[biopsy]

Hi,

is it possible to add athlon-xp support for this board?

gigabyte states that it will support upto athlon 1400, the fastest cpu supported by this 100MHz chipset. I have an athlon-xp1600+ (ie 1400 clock 100MHz clock) that should work but it is not recognised.

It's currently kitted out with a 700 meg athon so the upgrade would be great.

I'd also like to be able to set Vcore (non adjustable on this auto detect bios) . The xp mobile will run as low as 1.3V and while I have run these things at 1.75V for o/c I'd rather not abuse it if I don't need to.

I've got a few ideas about doing the mod but have don't have a full enough disassembly of amibios yet, and realised maybe I'm reinventing the wheel.


http://www.giga-byte.co.uk/products/prod...id=1364#sp
http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Gigabyte/GA-7IXE4.html

It is running the FAd latest BIOS release above. It's an AMIBIOS.

Is this doable?

BTW this mobo is useful for hardware reasons, it has two ISA slots that are needed for special hardware interfaces. Otherwise I would not bother. (Apart from the fun of it.)

[1234s282]

Sorry but im unable to open this bios file for modding!

None of my tools will open it!

Admin

[biopsy]

Sorry but im unable to open this bios file for modding!

None of my tools will open it!

Admin

thanks for looking. I found that AMIBCP7.6 was able to open it and extract modules. I runs from DOS only . Earlier versions that worked within windows I found to report "can't open that file" or something similar. I was mostly running from Wine but got same result on win2k.

AMIBCP can extract all modules but will not allow changing the basic ones like runtime and post. I also found that if I altered individual setting on the menu and diffed that saved bios there were literally hundreds of changes for one trivial on/off change.

This is noted elsewhere as a known problem. This may be a bug or non-std Gigabyte trick (probably bug or version mismatch).

I'm looking at making a change by modding a module or adding a new one. That much seems to work correctly.

Now I need to know what to change and where...

[TheWiz]

Your BIOS has been successfully patched for all AMDk7 CPU steppings, and AMDK7NOW! support. Please flash at your own risk. I have also corrected Bus Disconnect Support and additional display features.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1525839/Bios/7IXE4cpu.rom

Thanks,
TheWiz

[biopsy]

Your BIOS has been successfully patched for all AMDk7 CPU steppings, and AMDK7NOW! support. Please flash at your own risk. I have also corrected Bus Disconnect Support and additional display features.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1525839/Bios/7IXE4cpu.rom

Thanks,
TheWiz

Fast work ! I'm impressed.

I'll have to wait to test since it has a soldered in BIOS , so I need to find a spare chip do some surgery first.

I don't think these earlier versions had the control-home "get out of jail card" so I need to go carefully.

I'll post back once I have a test result.

Thanks again for the speedy work.

[TheWiz]

Good plan, it would be interesting to hear how you prepped the board for the spare chip as wel.

TheWiz

[biopsy]

Good plan, it would be interesting to hear how you prepped the board for the spare chip as wel.

TheWiz

The idea is to unsolder the enable pin on the built-in chip and carefully solder a wire to each contact pad so as to attach a ZIF socket. This should enable a clean hot-flash and pre-empt any problems with a faulty bios image.

BTW I see you added a couple of modules to add the new steppings etc. What tools are needed to do this? What makes them get used?

What new features get unlocked? The config looks the same unless I'm missing something.

thanks again.

[abjibi]

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but I have the same motherboard and it would seem wasteful to make a new thread.

An old machine I have, has the GA-7IXE4 motherboard. Would the above modded BIOS allow me to use the unsupported processors in this list? http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Gigabyte/GA-7IXE4.html

Would it be possible to implement USB boot support, so the motherboard will then support booting from USB devices?

[danwat1234]

I too have this motherboard and wonder if this hacked BIOS posted by 'TheWiz' works properly and what are the new limits of what CPU I can install. I realize the FSB of the motherboard is 100/200MHZ so obviously Athlon XP chips would be underclocked but it would be awesome if I could put in a "high-end" Barton core and run it at ~1600MHZ with low power consumption and more work clock per clock than the original Athlon K7.
I have an Athlon MP 2800+ Barton core server chip laying around, I wonder if that would work.
Best utility to flash the BIOS? -> I'll google this since I'm sure it's been asked a bazillion times.

[abjibi]

Installed the modded BIOS and installed an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ ( http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K7/AMD-Ath...DMT3C.html ) which worked straight away. Shame it only runs at 1265 MHz, but the machine is much quicker now.

What's the fastest CPU I can install in thise motherboard, using the modded BIOS and no hardware mods/hacks?