Mobo third party firmware experiences?

[dbunder]

I know there's third party motherboard BIOS flashes out there for some boards. I have a rather old board (Jan 2003, MSI 865 Neo2-PFISR) with a P4c 2.8ghz processor installed, so it's still a totally rockin computer for development work and games. Problem is, MSI forgot about the board and isn't giving it any BIOS love. They still support the board, but it's near impossible that we'll ever see a BIOS upgrade again.

I just got a HDD with NCQ, and my BIOS doesn't support it. I'm sure there's a hacked BIOS out there for my board that CAN support NCQ.

Has anyone tried any third party BIOS? If so, on what board, for what purpose did you do it, and what were your results?

Risky business, I know. I'm just awfully curious.

 

[linux_0]

I know there's third party motherboard BIOS flashes out there for some boards. I have a rather old board (Jan 2003, MSI 865 Neo2-PFISR) with a P4c 2.8ghz processor installed, so it's still a totally rockin computer for development work and games. Problem is, MSI forgot about the board and isn't giving it any BIOS love. They still support the board, but it's near impossible that we'll ever see a BIOS upgrade again.

I just got a HDD with NCQ, and my BIOS doesn't support it. I'm sure there's a hacked BIOS out there for my board that CAN support NCQ.

Has anyone tried any third party BIOS? If so, on what board, for what purpose did you do it, and what were your results?

Risky business, I know. I'm just awfully curious.

I don't mean to be negative but I doubt this is possible.

 

[bigbadwolf]

IMO it's not worth risking -

1 you'll void your warranty. if it is still in effect

2 you wont notice much, if any, performance increase.

3 you will be able to use that hdd w/o new firmware , although you might have to change a jumper on the drive.

4 from the sounds of it you have a nice system, that you are happy with, and it does as you want it, it might be all at risk for no real benefit.

5 its unlikely that a board that was built w/o sata-300 support, will be able to support it, even with new firmware.

You said 'Has anyone tried any third party BIOS? If so, on what board, for what purpose did you do it, and what were your results? '

This is slightly irrelevant, as just because a third party BIOS worked on one mobo , doesnt mean that they have any warranty.

I just dont want you to lose a system you have had for so long over sometihng that doesnt make that much of a performance increase.

Whatever you choose to do, I hope it goes well.

 

[dbunder]

All good points, I just wanted to know if it was possible at all. NCQ may or may not produce a performance boost (though I do know my 7200rpm hitachi 250gb is slower than my 7200rpm seagate 250gb with ncq by a pretty hefty margin), I'm just a curious bastard. One of my favorite things to do with hardware is hack it via firmware programming or hardmods. I can't think of a single computer or console that's not hacked to holy hell and back, save for my Nintendo DS and my computer monitor. If something is possible, I want to try it. And I *always* try it within warranty periods, or retail store return periods and always make sure there's a way to revert the hardware back to its factory settings before I do anything insane to it.

NCQ is hopeless with my mobo, I'm afraid, but my next will support it and I'll have the joy of fooling around with it to see what it really can and can't do. I hear NCQ is just a good technology in theory, but in practice, it only produces a menial performance boost, sort of like SATA1.5 vs SATA3. Something always has to bottleneck somewhere.

 

[linux_0]

You can unlock 'features' if the motherboard supports it with MODBIN.
The problem is mastering MODBIN usage takes more skills than a guru to figure out. (Unless your name is Oskar Wu)

For those who don't know Oskar Wu, he is the designer of some of the best Abit boards and is now working for DFI and is responsible for the DFI LANParty UT series and other great OC'ing boards.


You do have some possible options which MIGHT work and may not require GURU level skills.

http://www.openbios.org/

http://linuxbios.org/index.php/Main_Page

It won't be easy tho.

Don't mess with your BIOS without having a Dual BIOS or another BIOS chip laying around with a known good copy of your current BIOS.

You can order BIOS chips online and there are people offering BIOS programming services.

 

[dbunder]

You can unlock 'features' if the motherboard supports it with MODBIN.
The problem is mastering MODBIN usage takes more skills than a guru to figure out. (Unless your name is Oskar Wu)

For those who don't know Oskar Wu, he is the designer of some of the best Abit boards and is now working for DFI and is responsible for the DFI LANParty UT series and other great OC'ing boards.


You do have some possible options which MIGHT work and may not require GURU level skills.

http://www.openbios.org/

http://linuxbios.org/index.php/Main_Page

It won't be easy tho.

Don't mess with your BIOS without having a Dual BIOS or another BIOS chip laying around with a known good copy of your current BIOS.

You can order BIOS chips online and there are people offering BIOS programming services.

Great resources, linux0. I don't think I'll be doing any BIOS programming, even though I have the skills to do so. But these links will teach me a hell of a lot more about BIOS' than I already know, and my brain is a sponge. Always wanting to learn something new - so just reading these sites will be satisfying enough for me.

 

[linux_0]

You can unlock 'features' if the motherboard supports it with MODBIN.
The problem is mastering MODBIN usage takes more skills than a guru to figure out. (Unless your name is Oskar Wu)

For those who don't know Oskar Wu, he is the designer of some of the best Abit boards and is now working for DFI and is responsible for the DFI LANParty UT series and other great OC'ing boards.


You do have some possible options which MIGHT work and may not require GURU level skills.

http://www.openbios.org/

http://linuxbios.org/index.php/Main_Page

It won't be easy tho.

Don't mess with your BIOS without having a Dual BIOS or another BIOS chip laying around with a known good copy of your current BIOS.

You can order BIOS chips online and there are people offering BIOS programming services.

Great resources, linux0. I don't think I'll be doing any BIOS programming, even though I have the skills to do so. But these links will teach me a hell of a lot more about BIOS' than I already know, and my brain is a sponge. Always wanting to learn something new - so just reading these sites will be satisfying enough for me.


Tru64 :-D

For more info check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS

They have other great links too.