On newer Abit boards there is a thing called a bios boot block that is a
portion of the bios that is not changed during a flash.  When you flash the
bios on my Abit IC7-G all the bios blocks are white except the last 4 which
are blue  and are not upgraded.  Supposedly, this allows you to  boot with a
floppy in the case of a flash failure and run the flash process again. At
least that's what the manual says.  I haven't tried it and don't want to.

Ben Moore


-----Original Message-----
From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Shkabara
Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 7:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] clearing bios

I may be behind the times, but I understood that setting the jumper was to
erase the CMOS settings to default, NOT clearing the BIOS. An easier way to
clear the CMOS settings is to use the KILLCMOS utility that is available at
our www.freepctech.com site.

If the BIOS indeed needs to be "cleared" - meaning you need to flash it to a
new version, it would usually involve a boot floppy with a utility and the
BIOS code on it. If the BIOS was damaged for some reason, then a new BIOS
ROM would need to be physically installed before such an upgrade could be
done.

Do the new motherboards actually have some non-flashable portion of the BIOS
that will clear the flashable portion? I am not aware of any such
capability. Please let me know if there is.

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