Hot Swapping

[Neofate]

Heya...

Just wanted everyone to give me their versions of how to go about doing a hotswap with a PLCC EEPROM bios chip, on identical boards? IE: one good, one bad.

If you could, I'd like step by step directions on how to prevent the good chip from any damage if possible. Also, everyone give me their own ways of doing this, I like more than one opinion to form my own

Thanks a ton!

[Adam217]

I loosen the current bios chip in the working board, but make sure all the pins are still making contact. Lay the board on a non-conductive surface, mainboard boxes work nicely; they raise the board off the table enough to so that when you install a video card the end of the bracket won't lift the board off the surface it is resting on, I also like to put the tab into one of the cracks in the box so the board has some sort of extra anti-slide/turn while not being permanently fixed down. I would only hook up the necessary components to do the task, floppy drive and video card, the more you have in the more stuff gets in the way. Boot the board with a basic dos boot disk, I prefer the DRDOS flashing disk from www.bootdisk.com , put your necessary files on the disk, bios image and flashing utility. Once the computer is fully booted and waiting at an A: prompt remove the working bios and replace it with the non-working bios and proceed to flash as you would any bios, making sure to use the proper switches to make sure you flash every portion of the bios that needs fixing. I am an Abit mainboard fan and happen to like and use the preset batch files they have created for flashing there boards. I have had to resurrect the bios on my NF7-S v1.2 10 or so times and am yet to have a problem other than screwing up the MAC address for the onboard LAN and FireWire, and there is another utility to aid in the repairing of those.

Good Luck, and if you need something to fix your MAC address PM me and I will get it to you.

Adam

P.S. I just noticed you had an Epox 8RDA+, I actualy had to flash my NF7-S bios with my 8RDA+ by using the force command when I though I fried both my NF7-S's, but I only left the cmos clear jumper set the wrong way on both boards, inturn I didn't need to do it but it worked.


P.P.S. Discharge any static you may have in your body by touching a metal object, I am yet to fry anything my self, but in 12yrs buisness my co-worker has managed to fry one stick of 72pin simms that he had set into the metal storage cabnet that we store it in, and watched it arc to the cabnet, but that was in the dead middle of a very dry winter.