Identifying mobo/bios update

[Scottishjim]

Hi all im new to the forums, well my question is: my friend gave me his comp to try and sort out, he flashed his bios to try and get a agp gpu to work but he has flashed to what I believe the wrong bios. Using everest it states the board is a pcchips m810lr, he in cluded with his comp the spec sheet and mobo box, no manual though. The box is claiming its a amptron k7-810xlm but the spec sheet claims its a 810lm, the full code give on the sheet is: mb7-ecs-810lm. So my question is how can I tell what type of board this is to get the correct flash. All comments/help will be greatly appreciated.

[liljim]

Hi and welcome to PCTechforums

Start by downloading . Its a pretty simple program, install it then run it. When the program opens you will have a menu tree on the left side. CLick the + next to motherboard to expand the list then click the word motherboard from the expanded list. When you do that, you should see the motherboard info in the pane on the right. Post the info from the Motherboard ID and Motherboard name here and we can go from there.

Normally i would post a screenshot of what you should be seeing but i apologize currently unable to do so.

[Scottishjim]

Field Value
Motherboard ID 62-0103-001131-00101111-071595-SiS730S$M810LR_RELEASE 01/03/2003 S

Field Value
Motherboard Name PCChips M810LR

but if these readings are from the bios itself, its reading the flash he used. Its an old pc he bought back in 02, And the spec sheet that came with the comp says its a 810lm not lr. thx
Main reason im checking this is the right bios, is that under dxdiag it states agp texture acceleration not available, so i deff think he has the wrong chipset drivers installed and wanted to locatet the correct ones.
Also I have serial number of the board if it will at all help, the number is: 5603m14708866

[icecube]

On the Motherboard, you'll see Something like SIS 810 LR or what ever usually between the AGP card slot and the First PCI slot. Whats printed there is what determines the bios flash to use.

Normally if you attempt to flash with the wrong bios flash, the program is smart enough to tell you its the wrong board. If you do happen to flash the board with the wrong Bios program, it usually would make the board unbootable. Hence you will see that a lot of board manufactures warning not to flash unless you have problems.


What you suspect could be what has happened, and if it is functional, you should be able to flash it with the right bios program.

When you go to the manufactures web site and look for the Bios updates, they will list the boards as it should appear printed on the motherboard. Pay particular attention if it says Rev 1 Rev 2 etc. Each one is for a different production model. Sometimes the Rev 1 or 2 numbers are written in magic marker. The info you need should be on the motherboard.

[Scottishjim]

Thanks for the help, flashed bios got gpu to work but am still experiencing a prior problem. When i hook up the slave hdd the post screen recognizes it as a wamsung not a samsung, in turn windows dosnt show its there, when I hook it to the second ide cable on the first plug it works fine, both leads have been replaced and this problem lies on both when i try to hook up a slave, any suggestions? would be greatly appreciated

[liljim]

I would start by checking the jumpers, make sure the Master drive is indeed set to master and slave drive to slave. If thats not it, set the jumper on the slave drive to cable select and see if that works.

[icecube]

Check the ide cables for a small rectangular punched hole that cuts one of the wires. Dell uses these all the time. They make the IDE ribbon cable select. The middle connector becomes the master and the end one becomes the slave--thats with both drives set to cable select. The best way to hook up two drives is one to each IDE cable.

If you are doing a new install only hook up one drive

Hope this helps

[Scottishjim]

Thanks so much for the help guys, it never dawned on me to try cable select. And as far as hooking one drive per cable, cable length wont allow if i want my cd and dvd drives hooked also. Well thanks agaion.

[icecube]

The reason I suggested that you put one hard drive on each IDE cable isn't for convenience, its for safety.

With both drives hooked up with cable select (which really sucks) you really don't know from looking at the drives which is the C drive and which is the D drive.

Many times on a new install, the wrong drive is picked to image just because of the cable select mess. The person ends up wiping out their data drive when they wanted the install on the other drive.


Buy some real IDE cables, and they do make 3 footer's. They (who ever "they" are) recommend 18 inch cables but I use a three footer to ghost data to a new hard drive on another machine.

Another benefit of one drive to each IDE, is that if you run two CD Roms or a DVD and CD Rom, they can talk to each other at the same time if they are on seperate cables. When they are on the same cable its stop and go, they both can't talk at the same time.

Remember keep it simple now and eliminate future problems.