MAN DOWN :(

Distributed Computing Projects Crunchers Cafe
1

Cruncher down :frowning:

With the order of my two new graphics cards and some benchmarking planned for a bit of fun, I thought I know, I’ll update my BIOS. It’s an ASUS board and has the crash free bios thingy, it’ll be fine.

So I have a P5B with my Quad Q6600 and 8Gb of ram, so I figured I’d check on release notes etc, and the new bios would allow more control of the voltage to the graphics, a worthy upgrade.

Cue the first mistake, using the Asus windows utility to flash the bios. Failed on the verification state, and then anything after that even trying to open the app caused the app to crash. I knew what was now coming, a blank eeprom as trying to put back the old bios resulted in a message telling me I had no asus recognised bios, right before the flash app crashed again.

A reboot later, with a few clear CMOS done just in case, and I’ve one toasted board :frowning: And a google would seem to indicate that I’m not the only one to have done it. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Now it would appear there is a way to flash the bios from another machine using the SPI header on the board, as the bios is embedded and you can’t simply replace it. Motherboard is under warranty so is now being sent back to Asus for them to spend five seconds flashing the bios back. I’m rather annoyed that this has happened tbh, it would seem that the ‘crash free’ bios is little more than a tiny instruction in the bios, and if you have no bios then you are not crash free :catfight:

So, quad core down for 28days, or four days if I hit the wallet and bring another cruncher online. That pretty much depends on the post and on a certain couple of cheques arriving.

Cruncher down, although I’m about to try my chip in a server I’ve got under the desk. That may mean an upgrade comes about for a complete new host for the graphics cards I brought.

I suspect, cruncher down will result in two crunchers (or more) back by the end of the month :lol:

DT.

2

That’s a shame DT. Boy, you would think that ASUS would have the application that does the flashing available on a menu driven bootable CD.

3

there is an easy flash that works from the support cd, and then can use USB to do the flash. As the site offered a windows app I chose it for ease of use, and will now be cruncher down for a while as a result :frowning:

The good news, a little play with a few setting in my Dell PE SC440 and the quad is running in there to replace the E2160 tiny 1.8Ghz duals.

However, the downer is that the SC440 only has a PCI-E 1 slot, so no GPU testing in this box :frowning:
Upside, I can wait for the result of the RMA, then I may just update the CPU’s in all five of the Dells I have running (they were £99 each test machines).

DT.

4

Working in the field I’ve come across a few issues with Asus mobos having had to replace enough of them in Viglen machines mostly for graphics problems, but other issues as well and I feel reluctant to try them myself. Never had any issues with MSI and Gigabyte boards as yet, so will stick with what works well for me.

5

PCI-E 2 cards run fine run fine in PCI-E 1 slots as long as its at least a x8 and the card is not too fast , a GTX260 will be fine but a GTX295 will be severely throttled even on a x16.
Edit - this applies to crunching only - games will be affected.

6

I’d need to snap out the end of the actual slot, I missed an x, it’s a pci-i x1 slot. I might get brave, as that would turn my £99 cpu crunching bargain machines into little monsters. It can be done, I’ve seen guides on the net, it’s different when it’s your machine though :lol:

DT.

7

Can’t you still do a blind flash ? can’t remember the options but I thought there was a hotkey combo and as long as you have the CD in the drive it will run the flashing app even if you have no display output.

Bit like the old blind floppy disk flashings.

though if its doable by usb - create on new machine and potentially you just need to add some / option switches to override and force a just do it and don’t bother complaining to me flash.

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tried the blind flash option, got nothing :frowning: It’s now on the way back to Asus.

DT.

9

Sounds like a duff Bios chip then I suspect it would have have failed no matter what method… Its not uncommon.

10

I think I may go Gigabit for the next upgrade, I kinda like the dual bios safety.

DT.

11

GIGABYTE all the way! I have used that feature a few times. Hope the ASUS group sends it back in a timely fashion!