Bad BIOS flash...mainboard toast?

[Tsavo]

I have a KN8-SLI that failed a BIOS flash and now all I get is a black screen of death.

I tried clearing CMOS to no avail. BIOS is soldered on so I can't swap another in.

Is this board hosed? I can't think of anything that might work that will allow me to reflash the board.

[Psycho101]

Re: Bad BIOS flash...mainboard toast?

That's an Abit motherboard, and this is the Gigabyte support forum.

You need to post either in the general Motherboard section of Tweaktown or over at Abit support: abit.care@HEXUS - HEXUS.community discussion forums .

[Tsavo]

Re: Bad BIOS flash...mainboard toast?

No, it's a GIGABYTE K8N-SLI.

I flipped the 8 and N in the original post.

[Psycho101]

Re: Bad BIOS flash...mainboard toast?

Ok, thanks for the correction. I have a KN8, which is why I recognised it as an Abit.

I am guessing that the board does not have a dual BIOS?

Recovering a borked mobo BIOS is difficult. If it were for example a VGA card, one could simply blind flash via dos to a known good BIOS version.

Lsdmeasap may know of a way to get the board going. he holds on to certain information about boards that involves the shorting of BIOS pins to force data clears and reflashes etc. He doesn't give the info out to the general forum for obvious reasons. If you PM him I'm sure he can answer either way.

If all else fails and you're good with a soldering iron, you may be able to find a identical board for spares or repairs on eBay and remove the BIOS etc. You may also be able to temporarily hook a second BIOS chip up and initiate the flasher, removing the connections and forcing a flash of the hard wired chip. This is a method similar to what I would use if the board had a dual BIOS.

Good luck.

[Tsavo]

Re: Bad BIOS flash...mainboard toast?

Thanks :).

I'm going to try the recovery method that I found on this forum...though now I am thinking the board is toast.