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How to flash an Intel AMI BIOS on an Intel OEM board ? (e.g. when you have BIOS 1.00.xx.CB0H and want to update to a 1.00.xx.CB0 BIOS)

I haven't tested this procedure, so use this information at your own risk!

The following illustrates how to go from a "1.00.xx.CB0H"-type BIOS to a regular "1.00.xx.CB0"-BIOS. The extra letter means that it's an Intel motherboard sold to an OEM (in this case Vobis = "H").

Everything said here *should* also be applicable for other Intel motherboards (that use AMI BIOS) and other OEMs too. (e.g. going from 1.00.xx.BC0R to 1.00.xx.BC0)

Background:

The "1.00.xx.CB0"-BIOS was a BIOS developed by AMI for Intel's "endeavour"- motherboard (also known as "Advanced-E/V"-MB). I guess that VOBIS did slightly modify this BIOS and called the modified version "1.00.xx.CB0H". It's likely that the letter "H" stands for "HIGHSCREEN" which is labeled on all of their PC's.

This brought me to the conclusion, that I could use the regular AMI-version since my motherboard WAS an "endeavour"-board.

You can download the "1.00.xx.CB0"-BIOS-versions from Intel. There are the versions 02, 03, 04, 05 and 06 available.

If you try to use any of these versions, you get an error saying that "the data are corrupt or you are using a wrong BIOS". The problem is, that the BIOS-ID string of the Intel-Files is only 1.00.02.CB0 but your actual BIOS is 1.00.02.CB0H, so the upgrade-program denies the execution of the upgrade.

I did the following:

  1. I downloaded the version 1.00.02.CB0 (equivalent to my actual version) and version 1.00.06.CB0 (the latest version) from the Intel-page.
  2. Following the instructions on the page "http://developer.intel.com/design/motherbd/genbios.htm" I created 2 boot-disks, one for each version.
  3. On the 1.00.02.CB0-Disk there are (among others) the files "1002cb0_.bio" and "1002cb0_.bi1". I opened both in a text editor (WordPad, comes with Windows95) and replaced the string "CB0 " (the SPACE behind CB0 is important) with "CB0H". Each file should have 1 occurrence of this string.
  4. Booting my computer with this modified disk, the "upgrade" from 02 to 02 was accepted. Surprising: the BIOS-ID was now 1.00.02.CB0 and not 1.00.02.CB0H
  5. I booted again with the (unmodified) 1.00.06.CB0-disk. This upgrade was accepted too, and now my BIOS-Version was 1.00.06.CB0.

Up to now (3 weeks) everything works fine and my new 4.3GB-harddisk is recognized too(which was the reason for this trouble...).

Please note:

  1. The Intel-upgrade-program allows saving your current BIOS to disk. YOU SHOULD DO THAT. Create a boot disk with your BIOS, then you have the opportunity to fall back to your "old" version, if something goes wrong. Even if the PC didn't boot: the endeavour-boards have a BIOS-recovery jumper. (See Intel's WWW-Page).
  2. It's likely that you can upgrade to Version 06 DIRECTLY by modifying the version-06-disk, but I haven't tried that. (Update: One visitor told me that this indeed possible and works!)
  3. There's a risk that VOBIS did not only put their company-name in the BIOS but did also other (functional) changes.

(Thanks to Veikko Summa for sending me this info)