There are larger Floppyes than 1,44 MB, which will alow you to put your 2MB bios on it Have you tryed to aquire one and try to recover ?
My PC doesn't actually have any FDD installed so petar's suggestion to aquire a FDD larger than 1.44MB prompted me to install a 1.44MB FDD just to see what happens. I tried both a USB FDD and a FDD connected to the onboard FDD connector. In both instances no lights come on the FDD's at any time. That can't be good.
IMO the first mod you've done should have been worked. You can even flash it without the additional switches. The manual /SLP method doesn't work at ASUS AMI bioses, since you'll loose the integrity of the bios. You have to restore it after................. EZFLASH is not able to flash any mod!!! To try again use first method AMI_SLIC3, flash with Afudos, no switches. The problem must be the OEM version of your XP.......to check it you may upload the oembios.ca_ file from your XP CD! Recovery: Format usb pen drive with FAT. Copy your original biosfile onto the usb pen drive. Switch off PSU, unplug power cord, plug in USB pen, plug in power cord, switch on PSU, switch on PC. Try different USB ports, try different USB drives (older ones with smaller capacity), alternatively try to rename your bios to AMIBOOT.ROM (upper-case letters). Also try to format it with FAT32
petar, Yes, I understood your suggestion and had googled floppy's larger than 1.44MB however until the shops open tomorrow morning I am just trying with whatever hardware I have at hand. In this regard I am becoming less optimistic because the machine is not responding to anything. So far I have tried standard FDD, USB FDD, IDE CD-ROM, USB Flash Disk, USB ZIP Disk and IDE ZIP Disk. For each device except FDD's (as file will not fit) I have tried with all 3 suggested file names for the BIOS file (i.e. AMIBOOT.ROM, P5EDeluxe.ROM and P5edlx.rom). I have also tried holding the CTRL+Home keys which I have also seen being recommended. The CD and ZIP Disk drives both show a light briefly upon booting but after that nothing more. The FDD and USB Flash Drives show no lights at any time. I'm starting to think that the mobo is dead. I understand that flashing a modded BIOS was risky, but it was working after the flash until I cleared the CMOS and would really like to understand why this killed it ? thanks & regards Rob
Yen, Many thanks for your reply. I am trying your recovery suggestions now. I think the USB flash drive I was using was formatted with FAT32. For BIOS recovery purposes I am using the original unmodded BIOS file however if/when I recover the BIOS I will go back to the method of the first mod as you suggest. thanks again, Rob
Yes, to recover use the original bios. Your case is really strange. Important is to unplug the power a few seconds, because the mobo needs to discharge before each new attempt to recover. Some USB pen drives are not readable by the bios anyway. "Asus crash free bios" this labeling is an absolute scream! But I have to agree. The chances are usually not that good.
Well no luck unfortunately. I have tried 32MB and 1GB flash drives, fat and fat32, different usb ports and all combinations of bios file names. Each time powering off and unplugging as suggested. At no time did the flash drive activity light come on. I'm fairly sure the mobo is dead. When buying this board it was a choice between the ASUS with the AMI bios and the Gigabyte with the award bios. I chose the ASUS because I thought the bios was easier to mod however I'm now thinking the Gigabyte would have been better because it has dual bios chips. Is the award bios hard to mod ?? I have to go to sleep now or I won't be able to go to work tomorrow. If I can think of anything else to try I will do it tomorrow night.......otherwise it is RMA time unfortunately. Many thanks to petar and Yen for trying to help Rob
For SLP2.0 only, both bioses are easy to modify. AMI: AMI_SLIC3, Gigabyte Award: Add ISA module by tommiy. For additional SLP1.0: AMI easy as well (AMI_SLIC3), Gigabyte: Manual mod of systembios, no problem for us modders. Choose the board what's best for you.