Compaq Presario 5457

[houseisland]

I am working on a Compaq Presario 5457 which has a Gigabyte GA-5SMM board with a K62 475 processor.

Can I safely flash this board with a Gigabyte bios in order to get away from all the silly ROMPaq stuff? I would like to be able to have the simple pleasure of pushing the delete key to access the bios settings.

The system is long out of warranty. It has none of the original hardware except for the case and the motherboard. It does not have the original operating system.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

[NooNoo]

I personally wouldn't in that it's a compaq and compaq have their boards specially made for them.

[houseisland]

I suspect that you have hoovered up the Tubby toast again here, NooNoo -- right as most always.

But this system is scrap given to me as a toy -- something I might use to add more horsepower to my play Linux box.

There is no great loss if a flash fails.

I have a number of approprietly-sized bios chips pulled from cracked motherboards, so I might pull the Compaq bios chip and put it back in a zif socket and try a hotswap bios flash as an experiment. If the flash doesn't work and the board doesn't fry, I might be able to put the original chip back and return to where I started.

We shall see. We shall see.

Interestingly, the board appears to be completely indistinguishable from those in Gigabyte's illustratrations, it has a standard PCB reversion number, and other than the Compaq bios splash screen there is no Compaq branding to be found anywhere about the board.

[NooNoo]

Then go for it, you understand the risks and its no biggie if it does fail... I like your hotswap idea.

Maybe a quick pm to Ruslan may be in order...he may have had experience with these.

[houseisland]

There isn't enought space on the micro-ATX format board to accomodate the zif socket.

So I tried the riskier finger swapping method (and luckily did not fry anything, although I did bend a few pins on the original bios chip pulling it by hand), but none of the flash attempts would work. The most common error was "BIOS size mis-match please download 2Mb BIOS." Yet, the chips to be flashed were just other 1Mb chips from other Socket 7 boards. The other error was "can't read chipset."

So I straightened the pins on the original chip and re-installed it, and now I am back to where I started. No better off. No worse off.

[Trout]

Originally posted by houseisland
I am working on a Compaq Presario 5457 which has a Gigabyte GA-5SMM board with a K62 475 processor.

Can I safely flash this board with a Gigabyte bios in order to get away from all the silly ROMPaq stuff? I would like to be able to have the simple pleasure of pushing the delete key to access the bios settings.

The system is long out of warranty. It has none of the original hardware except for the case and the motherboard. It does not have the original operating system.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

I Have DONE that exact board,, actually,, 5 of them,,, Used the gigabyte bios INSTEAD of the compaq,,
On that particular board it worked,, I have them running 500mhz k6s.
Also editted the rom to display the evil inside logo on boot,, Pretty Kool..
Was Fun Tinkering with those boards,, My Kids used them for 2 yrs before we upgraded to newer systems for college.

[Ruslan]

Originally posted by houseisland
There isn't enought space on the micro-ATX format board to accomodate the zif socket.

So I tried the riskier finger swapping method (and luckily did not fry anything, although I did bend a few pins on the original bios chip pulling it by hand), but none of the flash attempts would work. The most common error was "BIOS size mis-match please download 2Mb BIOS." Yet, the chips to be flashed were just other 1Mb chips from other Socket 7 boards. The other error was "can't read chipset."

So I straightened the pins on the original chip and re-installed it, and now I am back to where I started. No better off. No worse off.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi!

1. I added to the ZIF socket one or two standard 32-pin sockets (the same ones as used for BIOS chip in motherboards). Then it makes possible to use that ZIF socket in almost any MB. I can e-mail you pictures of that simplest modification, if needed.

2. You must use 2 Mbit chip for this MB because original BIOS chip is also 2 Mbit:

http://cn.giga-byte.com/products/ga5smm.htm



Take a closer look at this picture and compare with what you have...

Since this MB seems to be a "normal" Gigabyte MB, I think it is possible to change the BIOS. At least I did it sucsessfully for some of HP motherboards...
But... Sometimes you will have to reflash that spare chip using another (not a Compaq) MB... That damned Compaq's BIOS software could be the reason why you got an error message "cannot read chipset". I would try to use different universal flash utilites like AMIflash or Uniflash...
But anyways, use spare flash chip first (as you did!)... who knows...
And... good luck!

[houseisland]

Hi,

Thanks, Trout.

I ended up flashing the original bios chip with the Gigabyte F5 bios for the board. So far there are no problems. Everything is wonderful. There are rainbows in the sky. No more Sofpaq. No more ROMpaq. No more Compaq. And there was great rejoicing in the land.

Hi, Ruslan.

My board is identical to the one in your picture, except that Compaq was too cheap to use the onboard SDRAM that is present on the model illustrated.

I love the idea about stacking up the sockets. One of the problems associated with hotswapping chips is that there is a limited number of times you can pull and reinsert a chip or socket before the pins fatigue and start breaking off. I see a long life ahead for my zif socket. I can just replace the bottom socket if the pins go. Most cool.

[Trout]

Originally posted by houseisland
Hi,

Thanks, Trout.

I ended up flashing the original bios chip with the Gigabyte F5 bios for the board. So far there are no problems. Everything is wonderful. There are rainbows in the sky. No more Sofpaq. No more ROMpaq. No more Compaq. And there was great rejoicing in the land.

Yep,,, Bios Version F5 is the one i used also.
I ran out to my garage,, plugged that sucker in,, it saw 2 yrs use previosly,,AND still functioning PERFECT.Im thinking i'll load mandrake 9.1 linux in it for fun lol.
I Took it one step further back when i was playing with mine.
MSI had a bios rom editing program on a Motherboard CD bundle allowing the boot screen to have an overlay similar to the compaq boot screen,, BUT,, it allowed you to use ANY 16 color, 640x480 bmp
Was Cute at the time,, i made several backup bios chips, and had several different boot screens for the kids lol
trout


CONGRATS on your success
Trout

[Ruslan]

Originally posted by houseisland
I love the idea about stacking up the sockets. One of the problems associated with hotswapping chips is that there is a limited number of times you can pull and reinsert a chip or socket before the pins fatigue and start breaking off. I see a long life ahead for my zif socket. I can just replace the bottom socket if the pins go. Most cool.

Exactly!

Congratulations on your victory over Comcrap evil!