Hello all - Have hit a wall on this one and am hoping someone here may have a suggestion. I am attempting to perform a BIOS recovery on a Quanta KN1A whitebook, a model that was marketed in Europe as the Gericom Supersonic PCI-E KN1. The machine is from roughly 2004-2005, and the mobo model# is DAKN1AMB8G7 REV G. It has PhoenixBIOS on a chip that is soldered on to the motherboard. This particular unit had been working fine but received a bad/incorrect BIOS flash, and now the lights flash at power-on but there is no display and no boot. I tore the machine down, removed the CMOS battery for several hours, put it back together, crossed my fingers, and still nothing. In hopes that that the BIOS bootblock is still intact, I have dusted off a USB floppy drive and generated several iterations of Phoenix "Crisis Recovery" disks using various methods detailed on the "Bios Recovery Procedures" thread in these forums, each combined with a known-working BIOS.WPH image. I have had no luck getting the machine to boot from this diskette using what appears to be a fairly standard recovery procedure: 1) Battery out 2) Power cord out 3) Plug in USB floppy drive 3) Hold down Fn+B or Win+B (or one of several other possible key combinations: Fn+Esc, Fn+F, End, etc.) 4) Power cord in 5) Press power button In each case, I can hear the USB floppy drive engage briefly right after hitting the power button, after which the fan comes on briefly, various LEDs flash briefly... and then nothing. The power LED remains on, but still no display and no indication the floppy drive is being accessed. Given that I have nothing beyond the user guide for this machine and have been unable to find a motherboard-specific manual, does anyone here know if there is a specific "BIOS Recovery Mode" key combination is for this motherboard/machine? Or, conversely, can anyone confirm that that the board is toast and unrecoverable in its current state? Any further suggestions? Would appreciate any pointers... this is an old machine, but I'd still like to get it working again if possible.
seems u covered it well. best bet is to desolder bios and program it. what does it look like ? 8 pin spi ? easy bahh 2005 . doubt its spi
ISA BIOS according to the system block diagram, I'm afraid. I didn't take a picture when I had the machine apart, but (assuming I was looking at the right chip) the CMOS chip in this unit was relatively small, rectangular, and had at least 32 pins around all four sides. Given my soldering skills, probably not something I'm going to be attempting unless I decide to opt for a burnt spot on the motherboard where the BIOS used to be... Had been hoping I was just missing some motherboard-specific recovery procedure ... fingers still crossed but no longer holding my breath.
hi just came across this post as i too have messed up my gericom kn1 pci-e supersonic which i bought in 2005 for £1000 at aldi, anyhow my system was working fine i have flashed the machine many times before with 2.1 slic and running win 7, i thought there was a new bios update and loaded the files and flashed bios back to original bios but it failed and the system seems dead, it powers on and the cd and hdd lights flash, i have tried to do a recovery using dos usb and cd but to no avail, i also opened the system and in trying to remove the cmos battery the whole connector holding the battery has come off, i donot have a soldering iron anymore socant solder it back, i have put it away, but being the veryfirst and expensive laptop i would locccve to get it working again, it has been a soldily contructed laptop which has given me 7 years odf aservice. is there any one with hardware repair skills who can help me out, much obliged if anyone can help out.