In need of help with BIOS reprogramming

[Dolemite]

Hi,

I bought an Asus P5Q-VM and it turned out that it contains a BIOS chip of P5Q-EM DO, and also the BIOS is for the P5Q-EM DO. Since the two motherboards don't differ that much from each other, it works with that chip as well, but some features of the BIOS are missing which are there in the P5Q-VM BIOS.

So I bought an EEPROM usb flasher to reprogram the  BIOS chip with a P5Q-VM BIOS. I managed to program the chip with the latest BIOS version of the P5Q-VM, but when I connected the chip in to motherboard it didn't work. It just starts spinning the CPU cooler fan and that's it, it behaves like there was no BIOS chip in it.

I actually have another P5Q-VM and took the BIOS chip out of it, and placed it in the one Ive just bought and it works with that chip just fine.


When I examined the two chips better it turned out that they don't match, they come from different brands. The one I bought is a winbond IC, and one I took from the P5Q-VM I had is some different one I could'nt read it exactly but its starts with an E so Exxx something.

I don't understand how can it be that the motherboard works with the P5Q-EM DO chip, but when I flash the chip with the motherboards original BIOS it does not recognize the chip. Because it seems that there is no phyisical incompatiblity between the motherboard and the winbond chip, otherwise it wouldn't work with the P5Q-EM DO BIOS as well, but why doesn't it work with the original BIOS of the motherboard ?

Does anyone have an idea 

[GMPOWER]

*First off let me put a big disclaimer that I am not export, just a guy with very little experience, so take what I say with a grain of salt*

Did you make a backup of the original chip that was in the motherboard using the EEPROM flasher?  I know that Asus, and many other manufacture for that matter, put board information onto the chip along with the bios.  The board information will stay on the chip through a software bios update, but not an EEPROM flash.  If you did take an original backup image of the chip, you could flash the chip with that image, and then modify the software flash utility to force flash the correct image that you want.  If you didn’t take a backup, then you could make a backup image from the chip to your other board.  If you do go this route, then you are creating a clone of that board.  Any board information in the bios will be the same, and your network card mac address will be the same.  There are programs out there that allow you to change your mac address, Windows will pick up the new mac address, but Linux won’t.

I hope that this will help you, or at least get you thinking about this in a different light.

[Dolemite]

How can you force the bios flash utility to flash the BIOS I want ? It does not let me flash the P5Q-VM BIOS by default, because it thinks it is a P5Q-EM DO board (altough it isn't it's just the BIOS which is of P5Q-EM DO)

[GMPOWER]

How can you force the bios flash utility to flash the BIOS I want ? It does not let me flash the P5Q-VM BIOS by default, because it thinks it is a P5Q-EM DO board (altough it isn't it's just the BIOS which is of P5Q-EM DO)

I see on the spec sheet of the Asus website that that board has a AMI bios, so go to the AMI website too download their firware update tool, LINK.

1.  Unpack the AMIBIOS_and_Aptio_AMI_Firmware_Update_Utility.zip to wherever you want.
   
2.  Locate and open the unpacked folder amiflash\AMIBIO\AFUDOS
   
3.  Read AFUDOS.pdf for how to use and commands, write down how to use and what commands you will use.  The key command is /X for not to check ROM ID
   
4.  Download Rufus to create a bootable dos usb stick, Link
   
5.  Put Afudos.exe and the correct bios image that you want onto the flash drive
   
6.  Reboot the computer with the USB stick to boot into dos
   
7.  Run the program with the commands that you wrote down in step 3.  
   •  If this is me, I think my commands would look like this    AFUDOS.exe biosnamehere.rom /P /B /N /C /X
     

This should hopefully leave you with what you are looking for. 

There are also ways of disabling the security checks for windows based flash utilities by making some changes in the config file for the utility, but I am not sure what utility you have in windows, so I can't advise you on that without knowing.

*Once again, I must give the disclaimer that I am not an export, just a guy with very little experience, so do your own research on the technique and commands that I have stated before performing any of it to see if it will work for you*

[Dolemite]

Hi,

I tried afudos, didn't work unfortuntelly.It says bios does not support afu. Same with winflash. Tried amiflasher as well, it didn't work as well, there I got the " Chipset/Flash part isn't available. The function will be invalid." message.

What could be the problem ?