01-15-2016, 04:45 PM
So like a silly little boy I bought myself a second hand machine on eBay, knowing there was some issue with the disk. Can't and shan't blame the seller, he even had pictures of the error message (one of those "Insert proper boot media").
When I got it, it was behaving sporadic to say the least, would not accept any boot devices, every fifth or tenth boot, it would eventually find the hard drive and boot windows 10. They system was unstable to say the least. I tried turning of UEFI, and pretty certain it ignored me turning it off. (tried boot USB windows 98 (Hirokie... something rescue cd), Debian USB stick and boot cd).
I have now figured out that most likely the issue was caused by that Windows 10 install, and some updates to UEFI, not certain why on earth a OS would be allowed to make updates to the UEFI, but I found some bug reports who seemed to indicate that.
So how did a desperate father building a touch screen machine to teach his two year old daughter about computers, I bricked it.
In desperation I tried to run the BIOS update program on a unstable Windows 10 install, what can I say, I have huge cohones, and now a bricked BIOS.
Currently if I start the machine (power button works), I get two beeps after about eight seconds, then nine beeps after about thirty seconds. If I leave it on it will start another beep section than reboot.
I know that CD rom and flash is read just after the two beeps and just before the 9 beeps start.
I know the BIOS is a AMI BIOS.
I think it is AMI core 8, but that is me guessing.
I know that the BIOS rom files is a .CAM file (not certain what that means) file name P12-A1.CAP
Uses AFIWIN to install.
That is what I know so far.
I think the BIOS is working (hardware wise), just recon the ROM its trying to run is completely shafted five ways to Sunday.
The two beeps should mean parity error, but as it continues booting after that, I am guessing it is software error. (Ran the RAM through memcheck on other machine).
The nine beeps I think means "ROM BIOS checksum failure.", which would be inline with failed BIOS update I guess.
Thats what I believe
So what have I tried
Reset CMOS on motherboard (jumper ten second to clear), multiple times, including two where I forgot to move them switching it back on.
Remove the CMOS battery, multiple times, up to about an hour or so. Also short circuited it with a screwdriver for 30 seconds.
Neither of these moves makes any difference as far as I can tell.
Created FAT16 USB with P12-A1.CAP in root
Renamed it to P12-A1.ROM
Renamed it to AMIBOOT.ROM
Burned a CD with AMIBOOT.ROM, no luck.
Tried rebooting, tested Window+v, tested Ctrl+Esc, tested Ctrl+Home, neither SEEM to make a difference. Problem is I do not know which key combo is suppose to work to force the BIOS to read from USB or CD.
What would be brand for me (and my two year old daughter) is if anyone could tell us:
what the key combo or button pressing dance for this model to try to load BIOS from CD or USB?
What the file is suppose to be named, AMIBOOT.ROM or something else.
How do I tell if it is attempting to load the file.
Any other ideas what to try?
When I got it, it was behaving sporadic to say the least, would not accept any boot devices, every fifth or tenth boot, it would eventually find the hard drive and boot windows 10. They system was unstable to say the least. I tried turning of UEFI, and pretty certain it ignored me turning it off. (tried boot USB windows 98 (Hirokie... something rescue cd), Debian USB stick and boot cd).
I have now figured out that most likely the issue was caused by that Windows 10 install, and some updates to UEFI, not certain why on earth a OS would be allowed to make updates to the UEFI, but I found some bug reports who seemed to indicate that.
So how did a desperate father building a touch screen machine to teach his two year old daughter about computers, I bricked it.
In desperation I tried to run the BIOS update program on a unstable Windows 10 install, what can I say, I have huge cohones, and now a bricked BIOS.
Currently if I start the machine (power button works), I get two beeps after about eight seconds, then nine beeps after about thirty seconds. If I leave it on it will start another beep section than reboot.
I know that CD rom and flash is read just after the two beeps and just before the 9 beeps start.
I know the BIOS is a AMI BIOS.
I think it is AMI core 8, but that is me guessing.
I know that the BIOS rom files is a .CAM file (not certain what that means) file name P12-A1.CAP
Uses AFIWIN to install.
That is what I know so far.
I think the BIOS is working (hardware wise), just recon the ROM its trying to run is completely shafted five ways to Sunday.
The two beeps should mean parity error, but as it continues booting after that, I am guessing it is software error. (Ran the RAM through memcheck on other machine).
The nine beeps I think means "ROM BIOS checksum failure.", which would be inline with failed BIOS update I guess.
Thats what I believe
So what have I tried
Reset CMOS on motherboard (jumper ten second to clear), multiple times, including two where I forgot to move them switching it back on.
Remove the CMOS battery, multiple times, up to about an hour or so. Also short circuited it with a screwdriver for 30 seconds.
Neither of these moves makes any difference as far as I can tell.
Created FAT16 USB with P12-A1.CAP in root
Renamed it to P12-A1.ROM
Renamed it to AMIBOOT.ROM
Burned a CD with AMIBOOT.ROM, no luck.
Tried rebooting, tested Window+v, tested Ctrl+Esc, tested Ctrl+Home, neither SEEM to make a difference. Problem is I do not know which key combo is suppose to work to force the BIOS to read from USB or CD.
What would be brand for me (and my two year old daughter) is if anyone could tell us:
what the key combo or button pressing dance for this model to try to load BIOS from CD or USB?
What the file is suppose to be named, AMIBOOT.ROM or something else.
How do I tell if it is attempting to load the file.
Any other ideas what to try?