OEM Bios crossing

[ratdude747]

Quick question:

Is it possible (via BIOS updates or BIOS chip swapping) to convert an OEM board, such as the Board from a HP XW9300, to the clone of the the board, in this case a Tyan K8WE?

They're the exact same board except the HP one has one less LAN port and also has SCSI (suppossedly an option on the tyan's version).

Reason I ask is i recently found a XW9300 board for cheap and I was really wanting a K8WE... and if it was convertible by way of a BIOS flash or fresh BIOS chip, then I'd go for it.

[c_hegge]

Re: OEM Bios crossing

You can on some boards, but that doesn't mean you can do it on all boards.

[Evil Lurker]

Re: OEM Bios crossing

In theory you can, but the boards have to be identical meaning all the IC's have to be the same... usually there are some minor differences between boards. Also, the flash software does a PID check before flashing and if the board is an OEM model it terminates the flashing process.

What you would probably have to do for a successful bios de-nerfing is to desolder the bios chip and put it on a dedicated programmer to change the PID values. One other possible option would be to figure out a way to put bios chips in some sort of socket adapter and do a hot flash... had to do that a couple times in the past with some boards and it actually does work. Basically you boot up the PC off one bios, yank out the bios chip and replace it with the board still running. That way when the bios flashing utility loads it will read one bios, and right before it flashes you simply swap out ICs.

[Uranium-235]

Re: OEM Bios crossing

there are some flashers that are dos based and you can use some kind of /f to force a flash

I did such thing on an HP s939 board a year ago. bricked it good

[ratdude747]

Re: OEM Bios crossing

there are some flashers that are dos based and you can use some kind of /f to force a flash

I did such thing on an HP s939 board a year ago. bricked it good

Yeah, I better not.

[japlytic]

Re: OEM Bios crossing

Another thing to consider is the General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pin usage on the chipset - the use of these pins is at the discretion of the manufacturer.

[ratdude747]

Re: OEM Bios crossing

Another thing to consider is the General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pin usage on the chipset - the use of these pins is at the discretion of the manufacturer.

The boards are literally the same PCB... Exact same PCB.

[Topcat]

Re: OEM Bios crossing

I have one of those boards here somewhere, completely forgot about it.....it donated the IO shield to the Frankenserver way back when. That board has a few other differences as well, it has no case header for the buttons, lights, etc, the pins were never soldered in. You could put them in, you'd have to clear the holes and add them.

FWIW, the HP BIOS has the same features and functions as the OE.....just has the HP splash, which you can disable.... I wouldn't worry too much about the BIOS.