God dammit, my motherboard is dead.

[Tom]

It would appear that my BIOS has fried itself, and nothing I can do will get it back working. I have researched it to high heaven and can find no solution that doesn't involve writing a million lines of code and basically needing 2 computers (I only have one, and am writing this at a friend's house). Trust me, its not going to happen unless someone in Manchester has an A7N8X deluxe and wants to hot-swap a bios chip.

I'm therefore faced with the annoying possibility of having to buy a new motherboard and other stuff.

So, my current MB is an Asus A7N8X Deluxe. It has an AMD XP3000 (IIRC) processor in it. My GFX is an Nvidia 6800GT something plugged into an AGP port. I have a gig of ram, 3 big long memory chips and no I don't know what they are.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A7N8X-E Deluxe

Can somebody recommend a suitable fix, so I can go up to Scan on Monday and buy stuff to get it all working again? Do I have to buy loads of new stuff, or can I buy a decent motherboard that I can plug all my stuff into? I'd really rather not spend loads of money since my tax return is coming up, no more than £100 if possible (dont worry about VAT).

The best solution would be a new motherboard that I can plug my AGP card into and that also has one of those funky new fast graphics ports I've heard about (PCIE or something?), and that I can re-use my RAM in. I don't mind buying a new CPU if necessary but I want the same performance as my AMD CPU.

Also, how do I go about getting XP not to go beserk when it sees a different MB?

Help is much appreciated, I'm dead in the water without my computer

 

[WPKenny]

My a7n8x deluxe died a few months ago. I had to buy another motherboard. A really cheap shitty one but it got it up and running again.

ASROCK KT-400A I think it is.


It's got all the same features but it sound chip is a shitty realtek one.

 

[Kryten]

You should still find some new socket A motherboards floating around some companies and/or ebay shops. I picked up a new (and gauranteed) abit AN7 for 20 quid to replace a dead NF7 - is certainly teh dogs bollocks and has all the top of the range gizmos you'd expect, gigabit lan, soundstorm etc etc.

Have a shop around, must be some about still.

 

[Tom]

http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic5428.html?highlight=a7n8x

I'm trying a couple of the suggestions in there, perhaps they'll work.

Its very annoying that most people's computers now have no floppy (like my mates), so I've got his in bits with my floppy drive resting on the top to try it!

I reckon if this doesn't work, it'll be new MB, new GFX, new CPU, will I also need new RAM?

So long as I get the same or more performance than my current system, I'm not bothered.

 

[Bob007]

Quickest option is to replace SoA mobo with SoA mobo. As kenny says above. Won't need to change any other hardware then, But this depends on availabilty of SoA in ya area, I know in Birkenhead its hard to find 1. all seem to be 754 or above. Ask if any shops have anything in the bin if they got no stock, Lots of ppl upgrade this time of year, so might get somit with no warranty but working. Be cheeky

You on the right lines for repairing tho, pain in the arse mind but worth the effort just for ya own satisfaction Just depends at what stage ya bios became "dead", if it was when it was erased ya may be flogging a dead horse. if it was during write or when told to reboot, shouldn't be any problems getting it back. Also try flashing back to the bios it was on before you "updated" it. doesn't matter which, Idea first is to get a booting bios, after that you can bring it up to date.

Also have option of going for either 754 mobo and cpu with AGP slot so ya just replacing 2 parts or pick a 939 mobo with cpu and pci-e agp slots on the board. Replace card then at a later date if required.

 

[Bob007]

Lost edit button

Check ya ram to, if its 333 2700 it may need replacing if you got with mobo/cpu upgrade, if its 400 3200 you'll be fine.

Also last option, but not 1 i'd consider as a rule for a home pc is to get a new bios shipped to you. http://www.biosman.com/ used this guy a few times on jobs and reliable. but only use if you realy realy realy don't want to change any hardware.

 

[WPKenny]

not sure if that floppy disk method would work on mine. It gets as far as checking the ram but as soon as that's done it hangs. If I try to interfupt the ram check by trying to enter the bios or run the onboard flash utility it hangs too. Does the floppy disk method interrupt the above or something? Unfortunately I can't test anything cos I've got the shitty replacement motherboard hooked up right now and it'd be a real pain in the ass to hook up the old one if I wasn't sure it had a good chance of success.

 

[RandomBastard]

Bummer
I too have a A7N8X, they do indeed rock.

Few things to try that havent been suggested?
Try clearing the bios using the jumper?
Contact asus for a new bios chip?

Also ebay have a couple

This is the A7N8X-E Deluxe, same mobo, but has gigabit lan.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ASUS-A7N8X-E-...ryZ31496QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

And heres one the same as yours
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ASUS-A7N8X-Nf...ryZ31496QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Might be worth it for a quick cheap replacement?

 

[Tom]

The little fucker

Well I tried all sorts. Did the tricks in that website, managed to get the flashing utility to load up and even to load the bios file - then it came up with some bollocks about checksums and refused to do more.

So I went to a wedding, got pissed, had a great time and forgot about it.

This morning I bung the whole lot into the boot, drive down to the local computer place to find that its gone bust. So I went to the library and did a bit of researching, wrote some more floppies with various options. Got it back home, powered it up and pushed the floppy in - only to find the little swine booting up as though nothing had happened!

I've had to reset the CMOS options but that took only a minute or two. Its otherwise working perfectly fine!

Must have had sand in its vagina.

Thanks for the help, its saved me several hundreds of spondoolies.

 

[Tom]

Oh and Bob thanks very much for that link, I'll see about getting a spare chip ordered just in case it freaks out again.

Have some rep

 

[Tom]

not sure if that floppy disk method would work on mine. It gets as far as checking the ram but as soon as that's done it hangs. If I try to interfupt the ram check by trying to enter the bios or run the onboard flash utility it hangs too. Does the floppy disk method interrupt the above or something? Unfortunately I can't test anything cos I've got the shitty replacement motherboard hooked up right now and it'd be a real pain in the ass to hook up the old one if I wasn't sure it had a good chance of success.

Well theres this thing called 'bootblock' which I think is some kind of "Oh shit, the world is about to end but don't worry bootblock is our last chance" type of thing. Basically its a last resort method of reflashing the bios in case it gets corrupted.

Have a look at your board Kenny, there should be a sticker on the bios chip. Whatever the number is, goto the Asus website and download the relevant bios file (make sure you get the correct board revision, mine was a v2.0), and the awdflash thingy, and give it a try. If that doesn't work, try the link above.

 

[Clown]

Kenneth might know someone with a spare A7N8X-E Deluxe but he is incredibly lazy. He would probably sell it if they are still going for 70 quid like here http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ASUS-A7N8X-E-...ryZ31496QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

[WPKenny]

Right now it'd be a waste of money tbh. 25 quid was about my limit. My kit's not as good as it was but I don't do too much gaming on my rig right now anyway. Just started a new job where I have to fix mac's so a lot of my time's taken up arsing about with them. Hopefully once I've learnt enough about the mac that I don't have to arse about with it each evening I might have enough cash in the bank to buy a new pc.

 

[Clown]

Computers in general are a black hole of money. Fuck them.