man, i got a scare of my lifetime around 2 AM this morning.
i put on the Ultima 90 in a push-pull setup...had to do it that way to even come close to the Ultra-X with one fan.
back to the scare!

...i decided to flash to one of the newer beta bios since i was having problems with getting it to be everest stable at 480 X 8 with the ultima heatsink.
i then reest the bios back to default and set my memory voltage up to 2.1 to make sure it has enough juice to do its job...i booted from my usb thumb-drive like i normally have in the past when flashing...all the bios files are on there, except for the original bios.
i executed the runme.bat and when it got to the point of flashing it said the file did not match the part number...i go, "WHAT"!

...never had a problem before.
so...i tried several bioses with all the same results...even a manual write of the flash commands did not help!...so i tried the "11" bios which was already installed just to see if that would flash...it did!...i was surprised.
as i watched the bar progress which was normal UNTIL it reached the very end and then there was huge delay of saying the flash was successful, "hit F1 or reset."...something like that.
i said to myself, "hmmmm, not kosher there"!...i starred at the screen for a few seconds and said, ok, reset...i hit F1...it sarted to re-post and then stopped on code "16" which basically says something is wrong with the clock generator...there are also 2 other things possibly could have gone wrong!
no screen..NADA!...darn!...time to RMA for a new bios chip!...shezit!

...then, i remembered i had the QuadGT board in the closset...got that baby out; broke down the pro board...built up the quadgt with just an intel heatsink, one stick of memory and a PCI video card...powered up; went into the bios to set up to flash from the usb drive.
booted to the usb drive and then i did the hot flash swap of the bios chips...went to do the flash and wham-o, same thing again!...i said to myself it has to be a damaged/defective bios chip.
i wasn't ready to give up...maybe one more manual flash but i checked the switches that are available to see if there are any that would invoke or force a flash regardless of the part number difference.
there wasn't a clear cut switch that might help my situation...BUT...there was 2 switches that gave me some hope...they were the "F" and "QI" switches...don't remeber the exact definition for those switches...i'll post the help menu for the award flasher later to let you guys see what it says for those 2 switches.
anyway, a successful flash...i did it about 3 times to ensure the flash would work each time...didn't want to get in that scenario about part numbers not matching...3 times it worked...shut the system down and did the switch-a-roo!.
everything is working nicely now on the pro...SHEW!

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