bios flash programmer using a pic

[colin]

Hi,
Im looking to see if its feasable to program a flash chip wich is the bios
from my motherboard using a pic microcontroller, any search seems to throw
up things wich just apply to programming the pic flash itself, wich I can
already do, it probably wouldnt take too long to hook up a couple of pic
ports to a socket, but writing the software and getting the flash
programming algorithms right would probably not be worth it but some1 must
have done this sort of thing before, its an asus k8v motherboard not sure
what the flash chip is itself unless i peel the sticker off, seems such an
incredibly daft thing to have the ability to trash the motherboard by a
software command !

I also looked at upgrading but nothing I have on this system is compatable
with anything new >.<
its only 2 yrs old so upgrading might be nice but id rather do it a bit
later, also its hard to find motherboards with 2 serial ports.

Colin =^.^=

 

[Donald]

Hi,
Im looking to see if its feasable to program a flash chip wich is the bios
from my motherboard using a pic microcontroller, any search seems to throw
up things wich just apply to programming the pic flash itself, wich I can
already do, it probably wouldnt take too long to hook up a couple of pic
ports to a socket, but writing the software and getting the flash
programming algorithms right would probably not be worth it but some1 must
have done this sort of thing before, its an asus k8v motherboard not sure
what the flash chip is itself unless i peel the sticker off, seems such an
incredibly daft thing to have the ability to trash the motherboard by a
software command !

I also looked at upgrading but nothing I have on this system is compatable
with anything new >.<
its only 2 yrs old so upgrading might be nice but id rather do it a bit
later, also its hard to find motherboards with 2 serial ports.

Colin =^.^=

Please post a link to the flash chip you would like to program and a
link to the PIC chip you would like to use.

If there are enough pins on the PIC chip to connect to the Flash chip, I
would think so.

If there are too few pins on the PIC chip to connect to the Flash chip,
a hardware design with special software to handle the extra hardware
will be required.

Good Luck,

donald

 

[jasen]

Hi,
Im looking to see if its feasable to program a flash chip wich is the bios
from my motherboard using a pic microcontroller, any search seems to throw
up things wich just apply to programming the pic flash itself, wich I can
already do, it probably wouldnt take too long to hook up a couple of pic
ports to a socket, but writing the software and getting the flash
programming algorithms right would probably not be worth it but some1 must
have done this sort of thing before, its an asus k8v motherboard not sure
what the flash chip is itself unless i peel the sticker off, seems such an
incredibly daft thing to have the ability to trash the motherboard by a
software command !

but a useful thing to have the ability to enhance the motherboard by a
software command.

often there is a recovery mode provided which can be invoked if the flash
part of the bios is corrupted.

I also looked at upgrading but nothing I have on this system is compatable
with anything new >.<
its only 2 yrs old so upgrading might be nice but id rather do it a bit
later, also its hard to find motherboards with 2 serial ports.

yeah. serial cards are fairly cheap though.

Bye.
Jasen

 

[colin]

Please post a link to the flash chip you would like to program and a link
to the PIC chip you would like to use.

If there are enough pins on the PIC chip to connect to the Flash chip, I
would think so.

If there are too few pins on the PIC chip to connect to the Flash chip, a
hardware design with special software to handle the extra hardware will be
required.

Good Luck,

donald

thanks, Ive got a 28 pin flash 39fs040 4mb 512x8 and a dspic30f, 40pin ic,
at first thought I thought this wouldnt be a problem but counting all the
'available' pins I wouldnt have any spare for an rs232 port lol, however the
are some parallel port programmer designs out there using shift registers,
wich would seem good way to go, and with software too, and also I looked at
the flash specs and they seem to have internal algorithms,
however I found somewhere doing bios chips for a price to make this not
worth the effort, for now anyway, but at least if I want one for something
else in the future I know what to use.

thanks
Colin =^.^=

 

[colin]

but a useful thing to have the ability to enhance the motherboard by a
software command.

yes true, thats if it does actually succeed. I initially bought a gigabyte
k8 motherboard wich has the dual bios and stuffed full of all the other
goodies, but despite having many long lasting gigabyte boards this one
lasted only a few hours, so I got a different cheaper one as I wasnt sure
what had gone wrong at the time.

its a shame the gigabyte didnt work and i couldnt get out to send it back, I
recently tried to get it working again, I found out about the 'bad pc
capacitor issue' and it had the ones from the suspect capacitor company,
however I looked at the 1.5v supply and it showed 20mv of ripple wich was
probably picked up in the scope ground lead anyway.

Is there any good way to fualt find on these boards ? it worked fine for a
few hours then would crash windows after a while, then eventually would
crash before windows finished loading, but now it does nothing, I just hope
I havnt trashed my cpu or gfx card by trying it in this board again now lol.

often there is a recovery mode provided which can be invoked if the flash
part of the bios is corrupted.

yes theres suposedly a boot block wich has enough in it to recover the main
part from a floppy or cd, or so it says in the manual, but this proceess
also failed in this case, then I read al the nasty things about using the
ex-flash process, its rumoured it may actualy decide to update the boot
block too, either way it seems it erased the whole chip.

yeah. serial cards are fairly cheap though.

true i looked at a few not so long ago and decided they seemed very
expensive for what they were, you used to be able to get realy cheap
general purpose io cards with a whole gourmet of ports, or soundcards with
ports, even scsi ports as well, but then they started putting them on the
motherboard and these have gone out of fashion.

but I just found one for £20 with 2 serial ports, wich would make the choice
of motehrboard easier, and might be worth it to move to new systems too,
although I expect pci will go out of fashion by then.

it does my head in the way pc things change it seems I can never just
upgrade the one thing I need to without finding everything else is
incompatable.

the reason I wanted to upgrade my bios was my primary ide drive got
corupted, and chkdsk just gave up trying to fix it, although it seemed ok
and would boot, and passed the low level tests, the file system eventualy
gave up completly

I recently got a bigger drive but had to get a sata one as IDE seems to be
going out of fashion too, so i decided to install winxp on that but it
wouldnt install on stata apparently, so i read somewhere the bios should
have an option to alow it to instal ok on sata, so i upgraded thinking the
new bios would have this feature.

At least now I have winxp on this resurected old pc so I could at least get
on the net and sort it out lol, however my new ntl modem didnt come with any
drivers so I had to get ntl to send me a disk first, they initially offered
to email me them, or it would take 14days to arrive, but i said it would be
quicker for me to switch to another supplier, the cd arrived 2 hours later
lol !

I hate cascade failures lol.

Colin =^.^=