Trial and tribulations with BIOS chip
Even though I consider myself to be foremost a programmer, I am also a systems manager. I like to build computers and manage networks, and every self respecting programmer should be able to build his own system.
Anyway, I am planning to migrate my main tool of trade, a Dell Inspiron 8000 to a Shuttle XPC. I intend to sacrifice some portability (actually quite a bit of portability) for a really powerful desktop system, at least one not easily matched by a laptop, much less a cost efective one.
So I ordered a brand new Shuttle XPC SN25P, with a Dual Core Athlon, 2GB of RAM dual monitor PCI-E card, dual Raptors SATA drives, etc, etc. I finally got all the components last week but after carefully putting it all together it wouldn't start. It wouldn't even post :(
After some basic troubleshooting I determined that my problem resided in a corrupt BIOS chip. By, reading and participating in the Sudhian Forums I got the feeling that Shuttle XPC systems tend to fail a lot in regard with their BIOS chip corruption. It makes me wonder why in this day and age of fabulous flash memory, we still have to struggle with such archaic flash BIOS. Why can't the motherboard manufacturers design a motherboard that uses a Compact Flash card, or an SD flash card in place of a BIOS chip? That way these cards can be easily programmed or "burned" using ordinary USB drives, or card readers. Granted, there would still be needed an elementary BIOS to read from these cards, but these could be very very basic and hardly would ever need reprogramming.
Well, I tried reprogramming my corrupt Shuttle BIOS chip with another motherboard using the hot flashing technique, and after endless burnings of many failed CD boot disks with the required files, I discovered they of different make. One uses Award (the Shuttle) while the other uses AMI, grrr. Oh well. I will try to get a new BIOS chip from Shuttle and if they won't send me one, I will need to RMA the whole barebone system. Ah such a nicely designed piece of hardware laid to waste because of a stupid easily corruptable BIOS chip. No wonder the BIOS Saviour thingy is getting to be so indispensible!
Anyway, I am planning to migrate my main tool of trade, a Dell Inspiron 8000 to a Shuttle XPC. I intend to sacrifice some portability (actually quite a bit of portability) for a really powerful desktop system, at least one not easily matched by a laptop, much less a cost efective one.
So I ordered a brand new Shuttle XPC SN25P, with a Dual Core Athlon, 2GB of RAM dual monitor PCI-E card, dual Raptors SATA drives, etc, etc. I finally got all the components last week but after carefully putting it all together it wouldn't start. It wouldn't even post :(
After some basic troubleshooting I determined that my problem resided in a corrupt BIOS chip. By, reading and participating in the Sudhian Forums I got the feeling that Shuttle XPC systems tend to fail a lot in regard with their BIOS chip corruption. It makes me wonder why in this day and age of fabulous flash memory, we still have to struggle with such archaic flash BIOS. Why can't the motherboard manufacturers design a motherboard that uses a Compact Flash card, or an SD flash card in place of a BIOS chip? That way these cards can be easily programmed or "burned" using ordinary USB drives, or card readers. Granted, there would still be needed an elementary BIOS to read from these cards, but these could be very very basic and hardly would ever need reprogramming.
Well, I tried reprogramming my corrupt Shuttle BIOS chip with another motherboard using the hot flashing technique, and after endless burnings of many failed CD boot disks with the required files, I discovered they of different make. One uses Award (the Shuttle) while the other uses AMI, grrr. Oh well. I will try to get a new BIOS chip from Shuttle and if they won't send me one, I will need to RMA the whole barebone system. Ah such a nicely designed piece of hardware laid to waste because of a stupid easily corruptable BIOS chip. No wonder the BIOS Saviour thingy is getting to be so indispensible!
posted by 99percent at 10:54 PM
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