One of my local LUG members has the following request, anyone here able to help?
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Good evening,
As I failed to realize that today is "nothing works" day, I upgraded a Tyan Tiger MPX mainboard from BIOS 4.03 to 4.06 At least, that's what it said it did. Instead, it bricked the machine.
I've taken the BIOS chip out, it's a 4mbit part by SST, 32pin square (9pin/7pin) 3.8mm PQFP. If anyone has the tools to write to it, please let me know.
Regards, Tony V.
P.S. Feel free to send this mail on. I realize that the person doing this will want to be compensated for their time.
Can you get the part number..my programmer has limited support for those devices but with luck it may be one of the ones on the list.
There are two other options, one is risky though and only advised if he cannot find someone with a compatible programmer.
Some tyan boards had a bios flash recovery mode, I cannot remember the specifics but I think you completely remove the clear cmos jumper (rather that it being in the clear cmos or normal position) and then attach a floppy drive to the first floppy interface..then you insert a specially formatted floppy disk that you used to be able to create from instructions on the the tyan website (I had a look but their site is so terrible I couldn't even find the mainboard manual) the machine gave bleep codes as to whether the recovery flash was successful or not (the screen is blank through this process ISTR) This mode uses a portion of the bios that doesn't usually get overwritten by a bios update so works even after a failed flash..but not all tyan boards support it. I recall that when it is supported it is mentioned in the back of the manual.
The risky option is that if he has access to an identical machine it is possible to swap bios chips..and boot dos then *carefully* hot swap the working bios chip for the one with the bad flash and flash on a working revision. Naturally this is risky as it is possible you will fry the other chip but in the 3 or 4 times I have done this I have gotten away with it.
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Can you get the part number..my programmer has limited support for those devices but with luck it may be one of the ones on the list.
Thanks for the help Wayne.
Just got this back from the user (you can substitute your name for mine on the last line :-)
49LF040 33-4C-NH 0208056-BA
PLCC 4mbit part by SST.
Thanks for your help so far Mark.