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General discussion

an old mobo puzzlement

Feb 28, 2004 4:34PM PST

okay, here's my puzzlement:

I had a soyo 6BA+III mobo sitting around, had a bad EIDE socket. I saw another 6BA+III board on ebay with a bad bios flash, so i bought it cheap. it says 6BA+III on the board, altho it looks somewhat different . . . anyway, I put my old, good 6BA+III BIOS chip in the newly purchased board and it booted up, but oh man, is it slow -- like an LX board. takes a good 5-8 seconds to check the 64 KB of memory. Also a 650 mhz slot one CPU is only seen as 400 mhz. (this board is rated for 850 mhz)

so, is this an LX board incorrectly (or fraudulently) marked as the 6BA+III ? or is the swapped BIOS chip causing this speed limitation somehow?

was only 3 bucks on ebay-- fj

Discussion is locked

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Re:an old mobo puzzlement = not much here.
Feb 28, 2004 9:36PM PST

Did you update the BIOS to latest?

If not, why not?

Hint: I do this all the time and never lost a board. Must be some thousands by now...

Bob

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basic fear
Feb 29, 2004 2:37AM PST

well there are 3 reasons I didn't update the bios,

1) I was not totally convinced that this BIOS chip is the right one for this board, even tho it worked

2) the previously owner had a meltdown after doing a flash

3) it is acting so strange, i.e., running like a much older slower board, the speed of the mobo should be what it is, even with an old BIOS, yes?

but i'll do it if you think I should. will a BIOS update make the basic board speed faster (as seen in the memory check at startup)? - fj

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Then have the fearless do it.
Feb 29, 2004 2:56AM PST

This has become a recurring theme. People get boards and do everything but update the BIOS. My losses for such stand at ZERO boards in over 10 years. If I'm allowed a few "saves", then I'm in the negative board losses.

There is a method to flash the BIOS in a HOT FLASHING method. Which is how I recovered a few boards when I didn't have access to a device known as a PROM PROGRAMMER...

If you want to try it, here's the GOOGLE to the method.
http://www.google.com/search?&q=HOT+FLASHING

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Re:Then have the fearless do it.
Feb 29, 2004 5:15AM PST

that sounds like fun. I'll let you know how it goes! - fj