BIOS Update problem on GP6-450

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)

OK figured it out. Maybe this will help someone else...

Must have been 3 bad floppies that I was using.

- Booted to A: from Win98 boot disk.
- replaced boot disk with bios floppy
- copied bios files to RAMDRIVE (E 
- ran IFLASH from RAMDRIVE
- success!

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)

I did full formats of all three of the floppies I tried, either Win98
or DOS based. They all worked well enough when copying files to/from
them, no signs of problems.

This Gateway is a nice machine for its age. With a PII 450 and 384 MB
of RAM running Win2000 its speed is practically indistinguishable from
an Athlon XP1600 WinXP machine with 256MB RAM. This for office apps
and web.

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)

Does the WS440BX motherboard have a jumper setting to disallow flash BIOS
updates? It also may have a setting to recover the BIOS, which you do not want
to do. The presence of these jumpers would be consistent with Intel motherboard
designs... Ben Myers

On 5 Mar 2005 06:24:43 -0800, "Ken" <kenmilne@attbi.com> wrote:

>I have a GP6-450 with a Jabil BX Motherboard w/ Integrated Audio R1,
>part # 4000434.
>
>I want to update the bios to a later version from what I currently
>have, which is 4w4sboxo.15a.0006.p04
>
>The only downloadable bios on the Gateway website for this board is
>4W4SB0X0.15A.0019.P14
>
>I've followed the install instructions. The bios update program begins
>and gets to 75% complete, to the point where it says something like
>loading bios files.
>
>It then stops and I get a message, from within the BIOS update utility,
>"the update was unsuccessful".
>
>The old bios still works fine after this. I've tried different
>flopppies formatted in various ways (from win98, from DOS) but still no
>joy.
>
>I've been leaving the bios jumpers on the board in normal position
>since there is no instruction to do otherwise.
>
>Is this bios incompatible with his board? Is there something else I
>should try?
>

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)

Whenever I prepare a floppy to use to flash a mobo BIOS, I ALWAYS format it
first, doing a full format. Any bad spots, and the floppy goes in the trash. I
probably have a 1000 floppys here, so one less won't matter. It's not worth the
risk of a possible failed BIOS flash to use questionable diskette media.

.... Ben Myers

On 5 Mar 2005 08:20:17 -0800, "Ken" <kenmilne@attbi.com> wrote:

>OK figured it out. Maybe this will help someone else...
>
>Must have been 3 bad floppies that I was using.
>
>- Booted to A: from Win98 boot disk.
>- replaced boot disk with bios floppy
>- copied bios files to RAMDRIVE (E 
>- ran IFLASH from RAMDRIVE
>- success!
>

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)

I have exactly the same as your starting bios..15a.0006.p04 etc. My
problem is that the computer wont take any keyboard inputs on the
bios screen..at least not that I can get it to do.

Did u have the same problem? did the new bios cure it? Why did u
upgrade your bios?

Yes I agree about the speed but I unfortunatley only have 128 of ram
in it. Good machine for its age...and quiet...having no CPU fan.

Dale