Big Foot were quite reliable drives... not very fast - it's obvious...

You couldn't reflash BIOS chip simply because ...it is not a flash chip... Yeah, these boards were using ultra-violet erasable EPROMs instead of flash chips (flash chips were much more expensive at those times)... Take a closer look and you will see transparent window under AWARD logo sticker...

It is possible to replace this chip with 1mbit flash chip, but... you know...

There is nothing significally changed in newer versions - at least I don't remember any useful changes... I've seen somewhere on http://rom.by/english.html
patched version of the BIOS, supporting drives over 32Gig (with original BIOS max. was - 8Gig)... Useful site, by the way...