K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

[bigbeark]

I have two of thee boards, one by ECS, the other an MSI K8M Neo-V.

They are socket 754 using a VIA chipset. They have two SATA connectors.
The BIOS does not support SATA DVD Drives. Oh, it will say it sees the Drive, but you can't reference it in the BIOS meaning it will spin up but you can't boot with it. If you attach a SATA HDD, it is reported as an IDE device There seems to be some wierdness if you try to use 2 SATA drives together. It only sees one drive. I can't tell if this is a defect or just the BIOS.

The BIOS Setup also does not give you any ideas what it will support.
I installed a SCSI card and Drive and it recognized that and showed it in the BIOS settings. But it doesn't show the device as acceptable until you actually install it.

I looked at MSI's BIOS update documents and they say you can't use a floppy to update the BIOS, but they then talk about how to create a BOOT floppy,

Anyone done any BIOS updates on one of these?

The boards seem quite fast otherwise.

[stj]

Re: K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

did you try customising the bios?

[pfrcom]

Re: K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

MSI K8M Neo-V

Don't try MSI's godawful tools for a BIOS update or you're likely to end up with a paperweight

Instead choose BIOS from here
http://www.msi-computer.co.jp/suppor...Neo-V&x=14&y=5
then update under DOS

FWIW (first) Zip file contains BIOS image, update utility & instructions

If it was me though, I'd probably try the second download, seeing it's last of the v.3 series

[bigbeark]

Re: K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

did you try customising the bios?

How do you do that?

Do you mean within the existing BIOS setup? It allows you to select from 50 "types" of harddrive. Never seen anything like it, instant confusion.

[stj]

Re: K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

search this string "Phoenix BIOS Editor v2.2.0.1 & Keygen"

[bigbeark]

Re: K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

search this string "Phoenix BIOS Editor v2.2.0.1 & Keygen"

I checked this out and I think it's beyond my comfort zone, though very interesting.

It seems mainly to allow tweaking performance parameters. I did not see anything about adding new device types.

The key here is that the board treats "serial devices" as if they were IDE devices. I think the VIA 8237 is an older chipset that was developed when there was no SATA, and the new BIOS just "emulates" SATA.

I do have an IDE DVD burner that I can use. I may also experiment with USB booting and see if that works.

[bigbeark]

Re: K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

Blow Taps for the MSI Neo-V. The BIOS stopped recognizing SATA completely. I put a SCSI card and Drive in it instead. It recognizes the SCSI drive but pops up a message saying it's incompatible with PATA: "Hit F1 to continue". So it boots the OS on the SCSI, but the light stays on on the PATA DVD. The BIOS disables the IDE device so it can boot SCSI. So your choice is either SCSI or PATA. In effect the machine is now an all-IDE box. Yes, I could try a different PCI slot, but really, I have a life!

[stj]

Re: K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

you need a scsi card with a bios on it.

[bigbeark]

Re: K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

you need a scsi card with a bios on it.

BIOS Version on Adaptec 29160N card is 2.57, as reported by the BIOS on bootup!
The VIA motherboard BIOS is at fault here!

[stj]

Re: K8M800 - Dumbest BIOS ever?

not so sure,
btw - the latest bios for that card is atleast 3.10 because i have a few.

the phoenix/award bios btw has lots of menu's in it that are disabled.
the editor can turn them on.
some of them relate to the boot devices.