[ale] [ALE] Hardware issues w/Linux

[Scott Castaline]

On 03/06/2011 06:43 AM, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> On Mar 5, 2011, at 9:17 PM, Scott Castaline wrote:
>
>> It's now bricked. The debug LED panel is sitting there flashin FF insync with the HDD LED. I guess the FF means I'm f**ked x 2. As far as method of flashing, I went through the BIOS utility like I've always done on other boards, ever since BIOS mfgs started including that capability. It did have a problem saving the original BIOS, that should have been my warning that something wasn't right. Never been an issue before, read about it from others moaning that they just bricked their (fill in your device of evil ie: MoBo, router, DVD player), but that had never happened to me. Got some readin' to do and more searching using wifey's M$ (shudder, shudder) laptop.
> It probably isn't (totally) bricked.  Many modern motherboards have a means to trigger an emergency flash.  However, that typically requires a PS/2 keyboard, a magic key combination, and a working floppy drive (e.g., one that is attached to the FDC, not one that is attached to the USB bus).  I have a working USB floppy, but not a normal FDC-connected one.
I do have PS/2 keyboard and possibly a FD in an old Compaq Deskpro, it 
may have a standard FD interface. Not sure if it's working as it hasn't 
been used in 10 yrs.
> You might want to try to see if your board supports such a failsafe/fallback mechanism.
No mention of such a capability in the manual. I could have sworn that I 
saw something about that on MSI boards, but haven't found any support of 
that yet. Gigabyte calls it "Dual BIOS" and I forget what ASUS calls it. 
It's frustrating, as I've done flashing long before it became available 
on Consumer grade boards, and those were more complicated to do than 
just highlighting and hitting enter on BIOS-CMOS settings options.
> Can you get into the BIOS' setup program at all at this point?
I couldn't get it to even start POST, it would just sit there with the 
Diag LCD and HDD flashing in sync and "FF was on the LCD. I am now 
running on the Gigabyte MoBo. I'm going to see if I can exchange it back 
with Newegg, I've never had to do that with them, can anyone tell me if 
they're easy to deal with as far as customer service goes?
> 	--- Mike
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