Hi,
I'm rewriting the original post, to be more concise and to be clearer.
I have an MSI X99S SLI Plus system board. This board has two BIOS chips on it, with a switch to toggle between the two. The primary BIOS is bad, and I now have it set to run on the backup chip. If anyone has this board or has experienced a dual BIOS situation like this, is it OK to run (indefinitely) on the backup BIOS?
Thank you, Todd
(Here's my original post, with a lot more detail:
I have a custom PC (DAW) with an MSI X99S SLI Plus system board. The board, CPU, and DIMMs are 2.5 years old, and the PSU/case are 7 years old. I recently started seeing issues with the system not getting through POST. I have heard no beep codes and this board does not have any diagnostic LEDs, so I have had to dig a little deeper. I unplugged the SSDs, HDD, and ODD, but that didn’t reveal anything. I was suspecting my PSU given its age. This system board has two BIOS chips, a default and a backup. So I flipped the multi-BIOS switch to start with the backup, and all is now running fine. I tried this several times to make sure it wasn’t just a “one off”. It works every time; the backup BIOS chip is booting the PC just fine.
I would like to know if there is any risk in running this system on the backup BIOS, with a dead default (primary) BIOS. If you have experience with this, please let me know your thoughts/comments. The BIOS chips are MX25L12873F from Macronix, 8-pin SOP. Not sure if this part is still in production; the geek in me is considering doing a little SMT rework, removing the bad chip and replacing it with a new one, but I just can’t find it readily available from the usual suspects in the US, Mouser, Digikey.
As a sidebar, here’s a little bit of detail on the two BIOSs on this board – the chips are adjacent to one another, with a blue LED for the default and a green LED for the backup. While I was testing the two BIOSs with the switch (of course only flipping the switch when the system is powered down and before boot), I noticed a very odd behavior with the LEDs. The switch was set to default and so the blue LED was lit. But… the green LED for the backup was lit, and then dimmed and flickered until it finally extinguished several seconds later. I’m still curious as to why this was happening – it’s my understanding that the first component to start when power is applied is the I/O controller (in this case, a Nuvoton chip). Not having access to a schematic, I assume the BIOS switch tells the Nuvoton chip which BIOS chip to use and thus which LED to light. So, what failed when the backup LED was dimming and flickering with the switch set to default? Could the failing default BIOS chip have caused this? Not critical, just more of a curiosity question.
Thank you for any help or insight that you can provide.)
I'm rewriting the original post, to be more concise and to be clearer.
I have an MSI X99S SLI Plus system board. This board has two BIOS chips on it, with a switch to toggle between the two. The primary BIOS is bad, and I now have it set to run on the backup chip. If anyone has this board or has experienced a dual BIOS situation like this, is it OK to run (indefinitely) on the backup BIOS?
Thank you, Todd
(Here's my original post, with a lot more detail:
I have a custom PC (DAW) with an MSI X99S SLI Plus system board. The board, CPU, and DIMMs are 2.5 years old, and the PSU/case are 7 years old. I recently started seeing issues with the system not getting through POST. I have heard no beep codes and this board does not have any diagnostic LEDs, so I have had to dig a little deeper. I unplugged the SSDs, HDD, and ODD, but that didn’t reveal anything. I was suspecting my PSU given its age. This system board has two BIOS chips, a default and a backup. So I flipped the multi-BIOS switch to start with the backup, and all is now running fine. I tried this several times to make sure it wasn’t just a “one off”. It works every time; the backup BIOS chip is booting the PC just fine.
I would like to know if there is any risk in running this system on the backup BIOS, with a dead default (primary) BIOS. If you have experience with this, please let me know your thoughts/comments. The BIOS chips are MX25L12873F from Macronix, 8-pin SOP. Not sure if this part is still in production; the geek in me is considering doing a little SMT rework, removing the bad chip and replacing it with a new one, but I just can’t find it readily available from the usual suspects in the US, Mouser, Digikey.
As a sidebar, here’s a little bit of detail on the two BIOSs on this board – the chips are adjacent to one another, with a blue LED for the default and a green LED for the backup. While I was testing the two BIOSs with the switch (of course only flipping the switch when the system is powered down and before boot), I noticed a very odd behavior with the LEDs. The switch was set to default and so the blue LED was lit. But… the green LED for the backup was lit, and then dimmed and flickered until it finally extinguished several seconds later. I’m still curious as to why this was happening – it’s my understanding that the first component to start when power is applied is the I/O controller (in this case, a Nuvoton chip). Not having access to a schematic, I assume the BIOS switch tells the Nuvoton chip which BIOS chip to use and thus which LED to light. So, what failed when the backup LED was dimming and flickering with the switch set to default? Could the failing default BIOS chip have caused this? Not critical, just more of a curiosity question.
Thank you for any help or insight that you can provide.)
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