unkown flash type and no floppy

[Sandwich]

I have a pcchips MOBO a M805LR with onboard sound and lan. I have a Duron chip at 750 mhz and 128 133 mem. I get the above message and have no floppy drive support. In fact it says boot disk failure Please insert system disk and press enter. No matter what boot disk I put in it can't seemingly read it. My search on the subject revealed a post by Ruslan thatindicates it's a bad bios chip. If this is the case, then I should send it back to the vendor .Right?

[SB]

Just curious, have you tried resetting the bios? Does it get all the way through POST? If so see if it'll boot off the cdrom. You could possibly put a bios flash on a cdr and flash it from there...

But yer probably right - if you've verified everything is set right and did all the basics then prob best to send it back. Esp since it's pcchips

[Sandwich]

Yeah it posts, in fact it will boot to windows if I put in my daughter's old 3Gb HDD. It boots up fine!!! Of course there's double everthing in device manager, and the audio and video drivers are not installed. Still no floppy suport there though. Says I have one but hangs if I try to access it.
I've tried seting bios to optimum defalts but still no luck?

[condor]

try replacing the FDD cable..

Disable ACPI Support in the BIOS and make Sure IRQ 6 and DMA 2 are not used by any other device..

try to remove all the hardware from the board (leaving only cpu, ram, disaply and floppy)

reset the CMOS and try again..

make sure you connect the floppy cabel right also the Floppy might be dead - so replace it to be sure ($7)..

[Ruslan]

Stupid question,but have You enabled FDD controller in BIOS settings (i.e. not only floppy drive as device)?

You can try also set
"Reset user congfiguration data = enabled (or "yes")" in BIOS.

Another question - did You try clean reinstall Windows?
Did You try deleting "ENUM" key in registry and have Windows redetect all hardware again?

[Ruslan]

If You're really gettting "uknown flash type" message just after CMOS summary table appears - You're really have either wrong BIOS chip type (currently not recognized by BIOS vendor software) or not flash chip, or partially erased BIOS chip.

In last case that chip should be replaced.
You said,what You have two same boards? Try swapping BIOS chips. If problem disappeared, send that chip back to supplier.

[Sandwich]

Well I swapped out MOBO's last night and With other MOBO I do not get the unknown flash type message. Unfortunatly I still don't have floppy support, so Ruslan is probably right about bios settings. I'll have to examine it more closly tonight.

[jimerhardt2]

You might try flipping the FDD cable on the drive and/or the MB. Of course, it could also just be a bad floppy drive. If you have a spare you could try swapping them.

[Geek #1]

Is the floppy cable the right way round. The first drive should have the end of the cable (the bit with the twist) and if the light is on all the time, reverse the cable.

[AlienDyne]

Probably it's the chip that causes it.
Just wondering, have you tried to load the old BIOS?

[Sandwich]

Well I got one of these things to run. The big problem with the floppies was that they refloppies that I was trying to use out of the old compaq's these computers replace. They won't work with this new MOBO. I wrote my vendor about the unkown flash type message and they say it could be a bad cpu and want me to swapping out a cpu, which I can do this week end. Incientily I p[aid 7.00 for the new floppy's, but with 7.00 shipping they cost 14.00 a piece!

[Sandwich]

2 machines running, but the unknown flash type MOBO is dead. What happens when you put an AMD TB 1Ghz with a 266 FSB processor in a 200 FSB MOBO. Does it only run at 750 mhz? If so, is there a way to run it faster?

[Ruslan]

Originally posted by Sandwich:
I wrote my vendor about the unkown flash type message and they say it could be a bad cpu and want me to swapping out a cpu, which I can do this week end.

LoL! Definately they didn't now what they said about or not a techies at all...

You can try overclocking Your CPU,though.
But You can doing it only at Your own risk.

[Sandwich]

I knew there was a reason not to do it. However, trying to start the computer so many times with the bios jumper set wrong might have done something to it?? or maybe I screwed somthing else up with it, but I'm hesitent to complain. Is there anyway to screw up the bios without a bad flash, or is that the only way?

[Ruslan]

Yeah,You could screw up BIOS chip... Especially if You have installed incorrectly BIOS chip programming voltage (12v instead of 5v). However, uknown flash message itself doesn't mean,what that chip no more can work properly. Manufacturer's ID code written in two first bytes (activated only using special software like flash utilites or BIOS checking built-in subroutine - in BIOS software dated after 1998year).Read my previous post above...
Even "uknown" BIOS chip can be fixed,though.
There are few flash utilites like "ecsflash" or "uniflash" what do the trick.
Read my topic here: http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin...&f=17&t=005214

You can run "uniflash" utility in "expert mode" with "force" key, manually identifying BIOS chip manufacturer. But You should know exactly manufacturer's codes in that case.
What exactly BIOS chip type is,by the way?

Did You try swapping BIOS chip with good one taken from another good motherboard You have?
Then You would know exactly,what problem is with bad BIOS chip only,for example.