Lets take a poll.

[houseisland]

I have to do a bios flash on a Gigabyte 486 motherboard which is not Y2K compatible. (Hey, it's been in mothballs for a bit.)

I have never had any firmware or bios flashes fail. Now I feel like the punk on the sidewalk in the Dirty Harry movie. I've lost count of the number of shots. The odds are probably against me. Do I feel lucky?

Can I get some predictions here? The choices are:

a) success

b) failure

c) who cares

Thanks.

[clauded]

hi,wish you A but it is going to be B
lol Clauded

[BadCache]

C. Its not you, it the 486.

[Shinma]

486?!!! You must really love DOS!

[houseisland]

Sorry, Shinma, but that wasn't one of the choices. You have coloured outside the lines a little here.

Lest we forget - for many office applications, word processing in particular, a 486 DX4 100 or a P24T with lots of RAM still gives a convincing performance with NT Workstation, particularly if you install the applications on a stripe set.

[Shinma]

(CHUCKLE)! And where pray tell, will you be getting the corresponding SIMMs for the 486 (or Pentium) at current prices? I just finished working on a 486 recently (don't ask!) and a Pentium 100MHz. I suggested that the client sit down before I informed him of SIMM costs.

[Eagle PC Diagnostech]

Are you sure it's not Y2K compatible?
I have a customer who has a 286 and the clock rolled over to the year 2000 without any problems, and recognized leap year too!!

[houseisland]

Well it is sort of Y2K compatible if you don't want to turn it off ever. It wants to set itself to 2094 with every reboot. This causes all kinds of interesting problems with everything from DHCP IP leases to anti-virus software.

But hey, all the Asus motherboards I have to deal with, even the really old ISA ones, just clocked over on their own - no problems. It is strange that the Gigabyte one would not especially since it is a late model PCI board.

Anyway, I haven't time to do the dreaded deed yet. It's not a major priority. Or maybe it's just that I'm afraid.

The cost of fast page RAM isn't a problem when you already own it and have long ago paid for it.

[format c:]

I had an old PC-chips 386 board handle the y-2k with no problems
Of course is was on my bench when I fired it up , but it had no complaints with 2000
go ahead flash it, flash it, flash it, Now everybody repeat after me
" Flash it! Flash it! Flash it !Flash it! Flash it! Flash it !Flash it! Flash it! Flash it !"
Gotta have some fun I think you will have succes with the flash

------------------
Format c:

[This message has been edited by format c: (edited March 18, 2000).]

[JeanneD]

- A -
Did you try totally clearing the bios (with the jumper) then resetting everything? But maybe you should just buy one of those Y2K hardware upgrade cards, might be easier and less risky. Cuz it's NT you can't run one of those DOS based software fixes....
A 486\100 pumped up w\56k modem and max ram, is fine for a lot of people who just want to do internet and stuff, not gaming...I have people still use 486\66 + win95 with no troubles... a lot of younger techies never owned less than a P166MMX, so think the rest should be dead and buried. At least most newer(non-proprietary)486s that took 72pin simms didn't have to have matching pairs of Ram and could do mixed amounts. I have a whole box of simms left over from upgrades. The simms around here cost about the same as the PC100 sdram.

I had absolutely no Y2K hardware failures, just some manual resets was all. The only software I had fail so far was Quicken older versions, which they warned about, but people didn't listen I guess...



[This message has been edited by JeanneD (edited March 18, 2000).]

[lysergic]

Those hardware cards do not work on machines that reset to 2094. On post the card looks at the date, sees that it is past 2000 and sees that its job is done. What I have been doing on these machines is just put a date command in the autoexe.bat. Kinda of a lame work around, but these were customers running old networks that did not want to upgrade.

[clauded]

hi the trick with the autoexec.bat file is the way we used to get the time with the old xt,seem`s like a 100 years ago,but it won`t work with your problem,flash is the only way i see,keep us posted,Clauded

[houseisland]

Well, I finally got around to doing something about the problem. I pulled all unnecessary hardware from the system to reduce the load on the power supply, and I went to do the deed -- and nothing. The flash utility reported that the bin file does not match the motherboard. Hey, I checked the board again, checked the manual, checked and rechecked, went back to the Giga-byte site, and redownloaded everything again just to be sure, but in the end the results were the same. I have sent off an enquiry to tech-support at Giga-byte. I will report back later.

[TRICKPLAYER]

If you get a reply from tech support at
gigabyte , you'd best frame it!
I have never had one!!!

[houseisland]

O.K. If I get a reply I'll forward it to you, Trick Player. That way you can have a framed copy, too.

A tip:

Imagine two scenarios - 1. A request for tech support begins, "I would like . . . ." - 2. A request for tech support begins, "On behalf of a client, I would like . . ."

In which scenario is the likelyhood of a prompt response greater?

Hey, I've tried this with multiple aliases and have sent multiple requests to the same support department. There is often a big difference in what happens.

[This message has been edited by houseisland (edited March 25, 2000).]