From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Aug 29 04:14:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id EAA27384 for hardware-outgoing; Fri, 29 Aug 1997 04:14:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from persprog.com (root@persprog.com [204.215.255.203]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id EAA27375 for ; Fri, 29 Aug 1997 04:14:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: by persprog.com (8.7.5/4.10) id TAA22968; Thu, 28 Aug 1997 19:56:37 -0500 Received: from dave.ppi.com(192.2.2.6) by cerberus.ppi.com via smap (V1.3) id sma022966; Thu Aug 28 20:56:35 1997 Message-ID: <34061E45.3A5D3C0B@persprog.com> Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 20:56:37 -0400 From: Dave Alderman Reply-To: dave@persprog.com Organization: Personalized Programming, Inc X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.0 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Jay D. Nelson" CC: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" , Howard Lew , hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Q: K5 clock speeds (Was: Re: K6-200 Has anyone ...) X-Priority: 3 (Normal) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jay D. Nelson wrote: > > Well -- the upshot of all this is: > > I flashed the bios simply because ASUS said it was necessary. It did > not fail. BTW -- it wasn't fear of flashing the bios -- it was a > reluctance to disassemble the machine. I realized after I wrote my original message that there was some implication that people "afraid" to flash their BIOS'es were timid. Actually, I was wondering if there was a good reason to be concerned that the procedure would fail. As long as you have the right BIOS and it is flashable then it is relatively safe. Of course if the vendor did not make clear which BIOS file to use then you could be in trouble. Actually I have toasted a BIOS once. This was a Micronics Neptune board in an old Micron box. I successfully flash-upgraded the board to support plug-n-play (yes, it was an old board) but the BusLogic controller that came with the machine stopped working. When I tried to restore the original BIOS it blew up supposedly because the original BIOS was smaller. To add insult to injury, this board had an emergency recovery procedure involving a pre-built floppy and a protected region of the BIOS that allowed you to restore the original BIOS after an unsuccessful flashing. Unfortunately, the BIOS upgrade needed so much space they overwrote the "protected" region. It was a good thing I had a friend who could blow me a new Intel Flash EEPROM. -- It's not my fault! It's some guy named "General Protection"! --Ratbert David W. Alderman dave@persprog.com