Anyone have experience with early 2000s Award BIOS?

[kfzhu1229]

Here I have found a thrift store find of a Intel 440BX Slot 1 based Abit-BE6-II motherboard incorrectly marketed as a Pentium 4 motherboard simply because it is inside a Pentium 4 motherboard box.
Unfortunately after sourcing a Pentium III 600EB Slot 1 CPU for this thing, it does not post!
Then I was like maybe it's because of bad caps on the motherboard. So I replaced some of the visibly damaged and leaking capacitors off the motherboard, and still it won't POST. But now the CPU gets power and gets warm.
So I ordered a POST card off eBay and plugged that in to get a better idea what's going on, and I get all the power rails except for 3.3V on the PCI slots and it displays two POST codes: 0D and A0. I believe 0D is the actual POST code that I am trying to look into.
I then unplugged RAM and tried RAM in all the different slots and also fiddled with the manual DIP switches for CPU clock, no change, still postcode 0D. I took out all the RAM sticks, still 0D. I took out the video card, same thing.
The RAM should not be a problem, I have a 32MB Hyundai PC66 stick which should work even for the oldest BIOS revisions.
I am wondering whether the CPU and the graphics I have can cause compatibility problems: I have the Pentium III 600EB with 133Mhz of FSB. The manual says the board is designed for 66Mhz and 100Mhz only, but even if I manually lower the FSB to 66 or 100Mhz, still 0D.
The graphics that I have atm is a Matrox G450 AGP.
However, I have also had a look here though and here it says it's also entirely possible to be a corrupted BIOS. What's the possibility of bitrot on these old motherboards?
So anyone has better idea what's going on?
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/thre ... max.31256/

[axur-delmeria]

Most likely you have an AWARD Elite (Version 4.51PG) BIOS. Based from http://www.bioscentral.com/postcodes/awardbios.htm

0D -> Initialize video interface; Detect CPU clock, read CMOS location 14h to find the type of video in use, detect and initialize video adapter

Do you have another video card to test it with?

[kfzhu1229]

0D -> Initialize video interface; Detect CPU clock, read CMOS location 14h to find the type of video in use, detect and initialize video adapter

Do you have another video card to test it with?

Unfortunately I don't have any other AGP cards and my PCI cards are all of the variants that have a built in PCIe to PCI bridge, like the Radeon HD 3450.
But if it were the video card, shouldn't the error code change when I have no RAM installed? Right now with no RAM I get the same 0D code.

[axur-delmeria]

Unfortunately I don't have any other AGP cards and my PCI cards are all of the variants that have a built in PCIe to PCI bridge, like the Radeon HD 3450.
But if it were the video card, shouldn't the error code change when I have no RAM installed? Right now with no RAM I get the same 0D code.

Oh. In that case, do you have a different CPU to play with? Or maybe remove the CMOS battery to force default settings?

[kfzhu1229]

Oh. In that case, do you have a different CPU to play with? Or maybe remove the CMOS battery to force default settings?

So I bought a TL866 programmer and flashed the BIOS to the latest version, it seems to go further in POST but still stuck on the same code.
And well now the board is done for because somehow the stupid RAM slot allowed me to plug a RAM backwards and then I hear a crack and smell something burning, and now I don't even get a code on the POST card, meaning that either the 3.3V power supply is done, or the SuperIO is burnt out.

[axur-delmeria]

And well now the board is done for because somehow the stupid RAM slot allowed me to plug a RAM backwards

Holy Mazinger how did that even happen? IIRC SDRAM slots have two humps, one at the center and another around 1/5 from one end to prevent that.

Time to hunt down another Slot 1 mobo then?

[kfzhu1229]

Holy Mazinger how did that even happen? IIRC SDRAM slots have two humps, one at the center and another around 1/5 from one end to prevent that.

Yes it has 2 humps, but well they are too short that one side clipped in and yeah.
Actually on the bright side, the SuperIO is not broken. The only thing that was broken was the 3.3V power rail for the RAM and fortunately I can just route one from the ATX power connector and that's fixed again.
But now I am back to those POST codes. It seems like 0D is saying detecting CPU clock, so if I assume the CPU is working what else should I look for? The clock generator perhaps? But if the clock generator is defective wouldn't the computer just not execute anything?