[Ace-a-Rue]

EDITED 04-07-2008 FOR CLARITY AND FURTHER REFINEMENT OF THE PROCEDURE

HOW TO FLASH WITH A FLOPPY AND USB DRIVE IN DOS FOR THE IP35 PRO:

WARNING: THIS PROCEDURE HAS RISKS WITH MAKING THE BOARD UNUSABLE IF THE FLASH IS UNSUCCESFUL...NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED
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download the latest offical bios from abit's website and use the "RUNME.BAT" and the "ABITFAE.BAT" that is package with the download to do the flashing for you automatically with two floppy's...change or update the flashing switches in "ABITFAE.BAT" with the switches that are shown below using the "edit" command in windows.

AUTOMATIC FLASHING PROCEDURES:

if you want to flash a beta bios release, all you do is edit "RUNME.BAT" with the correct file name of the beta bios...FOR EXAMPLE: if you download the "11" or "14" official bios, you will find the RUNME.BAT...open that file with the Windows edit command...inside, you would see this file name: M629B_11.BIN or this, if it was the 14 bios, M629B_14.BIN...if you want to use another bios file to flash your mobo, you must erase (edit) the current file name and then, put in the new/correct bios file name, ie., M629_16.B04...don't forget your basic DOS procedures...a file name can not be more than 8 alpha-numeric characters...this does not include the file extension...

you will need 2 floppy disks and a floppy drive....one disk will have the booting files to get you to a DOS "A:" prompt (or "C:" with USB)...the other disk carries your bios file along with the award flasher, runme.bat and abitfae.bat...

set the mobo up to boot off the floppy drive as the number 1 choice.

after booting off the 1st (boot) disk, swap out the bootdisk with the 2nd floppy disk that has your bios file, RUNME.BAT, ABITFAE.BAT and AWDFLASH.EXE....then, from the "A:" prompt, type this syntax: RUNME.BAT...just follow the screen prompts from there, which are a series of hitting the "ENTER" key to get to the final action of flashing...be patient while it flashes off a floppy disk...it takes time (about 1-2 minutes) for the bios file to be extracted off the floppy and then uncompacted into memory so it can be flashed via the award flashing program....this is why it is important to not overclock and have proper voltage to your memory sticks....i usually set up 2.1v for my Vdimm at default clock speed...additionally, i juice the vcore (about 0.04 or 0.05) up to be on the safe side too!

you can bypass the automatic way of flashing (not recommended) and do it the old fashion way of manually typing in everything including the switches, bios file name and award flashing program...this procedure is more prone to format and spacing mistakes which will abort the flashing process (no harm).

HOW TO MANUALLY FLASH BY TYPING THE WHOLE COMMAND LINE:

with the 2nd floppy in your "A" drive and you have the "A" prompt on the screen, you type this: A:AWDFLASH.EXE(space)M629B_16.B04(space)/e /py /sn /wb /cd /cp /cc /cks (add one space between each switch and the next forward slash)

EDIT:...the "E" switch returns you to the DOS "A" prompt after the flash...if for some reason you think the flash was unsuccessful, this gives you another opportunity to reflash!...you can do it as many times as you want!

remember there is one space between each file or switch annotation...there is NO space between the "A" prompt and AWDFLASH.EXE

DO NOT OVERCLOCK while flashing the bios....and...make sure you have proper voltage to your memory sticks like i mention above....to be on the safe side, i recommend to juice up your vcore so you compensate for vdroop.

always a good idea to do a full format on the floppy before copying the bios files to the 2nd floppy...if you have a bad sector on that floppy and do not do a full format, it would be just your luck that the bios file would be copied to that part of the bad sector(s) on the floppy disk.

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USB FLASH PROCEDURES:

if you want to use an USB thumbdrive for booting and flash process, you will need to download this HP TOOL

on that link page, you will also see a link to download the windows 98 booting files that the HP TOOL will want in order to prepare your USB drive as a bootable device/drive.

once you complete the USB boot conversion , copy these files: bios file, abitfae.bat, runme.bat and awdflash.exe to the root of the USB drive....in other words, DO NOT put it into a folder on the USB drive.

go into the mobo bios to select 'hard drive' as the 1st boot device...now...go into the "HARD DISK BOOT PRIORITY" to select the USB drive as your 1st choice to boot from.

from there, save the bios changes and let it boot from the USB drive.

once you see the "C:" prompt, you follow the same above procedures for flashing from a floppy disk....don't forget to edit the RUNME.BAT and ABITFAE.BAT as stated above.