First a little background…
I have an Iwill vx133 motherboard with a PIII 866 cpu.
The motherboard was running Linux (RH6.1) for about a year as a small web/file server. The server was taken off line a few months back. The entire time it was up it never had a problem.
Several days ago I took the motherboard/cpu out and replaced an older system which ran some sampling software (gigasampler on Windows 98se) in the studio.
Anyway, I put the old sampler drive in which had the old copy of Windows 98se. It booted fine, asked for new drivers, no problems. But I noticed the Iwill motherboard still had USB, com and lpt ports turned on. Considering I never use these in the sampler computer and I have to install 2 video cards, 2 sound cards and a NIC, I thought I should hop into the BIOS setup and flip these off.
This is where the problem started.
The computer boots fine but when you hit the delete key it goes to bounce into setup… but instead returns a crap screen. A blue bar along the bottom of the screen and a flashing prompt at the top. At this point the computer locks tight. You have to power down.
The Iwill website says there was one bios update from the one that shipped with the motherboard. Great I thought, I’ll download that, flash the new bios, problem solved.
Wrong.
To flash the bios I first used Awardflash that came zipped with the bios update (7.something). I boot from a basic no driver DOS v6.22 disk I’ve used for flashing in the past. I get to the prompt in awdflash that says to enter the filename -which in this case was vx0223.bin. The software then returns “unknown flash type” or something to that effect. The software then kicks me back to a DOS prompt.
I’ve not seen that before so I figure I’ll clear the BIOS settings via the jumper on the motherboard and try again. Awdflash gives the same error.
I download the flash update again, same error.
I download several different versions of award flash and try those, same error.
I get the newest release of Uniflash (1.26 I think), It doesn’t have a clue what has been installed on the bios chip and doesn’t let me do anything with it. It won’t even let me force a program.
Sadly I don’t have another bios chip for this board.
It’s my guess that the bios chip is just toasted or enough of it’s programming is corrupt and I pretty much sum the motherboard as a loss. It’s a cheap board anyway and I’m going to buy a new one tomorrow. BUT…
Anyone here have an idea of something I could try? Something off the wall to try and get the update programmed into the chip? As I’ve already written the board off as a loss, I’m willing to try anything. 
The system still boots yet it only thinks it’s a PIII 433mhz. I don’t have a eeprom burner.
I figure if anything I can pick up an old Celron or PIII in the 500mhz range and make a little utility computer out of the board, but it would be cool to have all the features back if it’s possible.
Any ideas?