Motherboards Flashing HP board with Tyan Bios?

Hello All,

I am currently building a dual AMD Opteron (skt 940) system using an HP XW9300 Motherboard. This motherboard is actually the Tyan K8WE S2895 motherboard, minus the 2nd ethernet port and a few other minor differences such as moved front panel headers and HP Branded BIOS.

I am not 100% certain, but I believe the HP Bios is a Phoenix based bios. I downloaded the HP bios update and it flashed no problem. Then, willing to risk frying the BIOS, I tried to apply the Tyan bios version 1.04 for this board. At first I tried the included "Phlash" utility for DOS. It failed with an error like "BCP DMI Block" not found or something. Then, I attempted the Windows utlity WinPhlash from Phoenix. It was able to backup the original bios to a file, but upon flashing it failed at Erasing Block 1/17.

So, its almost as if there is a flash write protection on the bios. The only thing that confuses me is why did the HP Bios flasher work fine? Is there a specified part of the BIOS that can be updated or something? The main question: Is there ANY WAY to get the Tyan bios on this board (even if there is a chance of ruining the bios) without physically removing the chip, as its soldered on to the board? I read something about soldering a wire between two of the BIOS chip's pins to remove flash-protect.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

 

I hate to say this, but I'd say flashing it with a different BIOS when HP have screwed with the layout is probably a bad idea. You can't be sure what else they've changed.

It sounds like they've write-protected the BIOS to stop you removing their own.

What's the advantage to replacing the HP BIOS with a new one?

If you're absolutely positive that the two boards are the same, then you could get a new BIOS chip for the board and tell them to flash the Tyan BIOS on it.

 

Well, the layout is the same. The pins they moved exist on both versions of the board, just that one board has the pins there and other just has the place for the pinheader with no actual pins sticking out (not sure what the real term for that is).

I would take the chip out, but the HP version of the board has the chip directly on the board without the socket. On my HP Board the bios chip has a small sticker on it that says "S2895", which is the Tyan model number, so I suppose they are the same chip.

The main reason I want to reflash it is because the HP bios gives really stupid errors on boot, mianly being "Front 1394 unplugged", "Front USB unplugged", "front audio unplugged", and "front fan uplugged". The other main advantage would be the ability to overclock, and change other settings. The HP Bios is limited to pretty much storage, boot order, password, and integrated peripherals (enabled/disabled).

Thanks for the help so far.

 

Surely there should be an option in the HP bios to disregard errors like that.
I should think, for a server board, that stability would be much more important than overclocking.
I don't know of any "overclocking" friendly server boards.

 

Nope, the only option about ignoring errors was the message about the fan being unplugged. And as far as I know, the Tyan k8we does have overclocking options in the BIOS.

 

hey guys,

really sorry for bringing up such an old thread, but i had been looking for info on flashing the tyan bios, and this was one of the top hits in google. so thought it may help anyone else after this information.

i can the tyan bios can be flashed onto the xw9300. i've had it running for about a month now both linux and XP Pro. its good to have cool n quiet working as it runs much quieter.
Overlord2kx was right when he mentioned about connecting a couple of the pins.

the pins which need to be connected are:
pin 32 (Vdd) to pin 7 (WP#)
pin 32 to pin 8 (TBL#)
that is for the SST49LF080A which you can get the data sheet from thier website. that turns off the chips write protect. i then used flashrom to flash the tyan bios to the chip.
i just used some strands from a small wire to connect the pins and it worked a treat.

one thing you need to make sure of is to disable the 2nd network adaptor in the tyan bios, as once u install network drivers in windows it'll prevent it from starting up.



--------edit: fixed the error with the pins to connect
also recently flashed the board again, and found you don't need to connect the pins. right next to the flash chip, there is a jumper which when connected will allow the top block to be written to. i tested with flashrom 0.9.1, and it wrote to all but the top block until the jumper was set.

 

Hi,

thx for the trick with the bios chip, it's working just the Vdd is the 32th pin ( next to pin 1 ).
How did you flash the bios with flashrom? I'm trying to flash tyan 2915-e from xw 9400 and I getting error that my bios size didn't match.

Thanks for help.

 

hi necro,

is the tyan bios a wph file? it will probably be 2KB bigger than what it needs to be. i just trimmed the last 2KB off the file.
i found the information on this page: www.wimsbios.com/forum/topic11101.html
it explains some methods to remove the extra data, if using linux easiest way is to use dd, otherwise a hex editor will do the job.

then it should flash fine onto the chip. but it'd be a good idea to have a way put old bios back on incase it doesn't work. i had an old motherboard which i would use to hotflash other chips if i needed to.
letus know how it goes. hopefully it'll all work out well. i've still not had any problems with mine, but remember if the motherboard is missing anything that the tyan one has, make sure to disable it in bios, as the xw9300 board only has 1 ethernet port, having the 2nd enabled caused some issues, but since disabling haven't had any.

 

Hi,

thank you, yesterday I find that thread too. It is working, I flashed the bios with flashrom and after reboot I used the phflash16 to reflash it again. Now it is working and supports my 2x 45nm opterons

The board from xw9400 is completely the same as tyan s2915-e. Just the pinouts are different.

 

Welcome everyone! Thanks for the community spirit and useful info

 

file needed

necroman can you link or send me the bin you used?
mr_jdviper at yahoo

 

Hi Necroman,
Thank you for your post about flashing HP xw9400 board with Tyan S2915-E Bios !
I try to do the same thing with my xw9400 motherboard (last version that supports AMD Istanbul Opteron Six-core processor).

Is it necessary to make change about pin connectors ???

Please, could you send me the bin you used ?
dunoit (at) gmail (dot) com

Thanks a lot,
jeff75

 

I grabbed sp32383.exe from http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...8-1&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=1843728&os=228 then used winrar to extract W309BF33.exe from that, then used winrar to extract the files from that. Inside the archive was WINPHL~1.HLP which had some interesting information.
I opened the hlp file, then clicked on advanced settings and found the following:

Code:

To access the Advanced Settings, click the Advanced Settings button.
If the Advanced Settings button is not on the main window, 

1.	Close WinPhlash
2. 	Open PHLASH.INI
3.	Under [UI] set: 

Advanced=1

4.	Run WinPhlash again

Clicking the Advanced Settings button opens a dialog box with these three pages:

The Flags Page for setting the options 
	The DMI Page for setting the DMI strings
	The Devices Page for selecting a flash part

Phoenix cME Secure WinPhlash (c) 2000 Phoenix Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved

From there I clicked on the flags page and found following:

Code:

Verify BIOS part number	The flash proceeds only if the BIOS part number in the new BIOS file is the same as the part number in the current BIOS.
Flash only if BIOS version is different	The flash proceeds only if the version number of the new BIOS is different. If the data structure of the old BIOS image, which includes the BIOS version and build date and time, is the same as the corresponding structure in the new BIOS file, then the program aborts the flash and DMI update.
Flash only if BIOS version is 
newer than system	The flash proceeds only if the Build date in the new BIOS is later than the Build date of the current BIOS. The program checks the data structure in both BIOSes. 
Verify BIOS image size	The flash proceeds only if the new ROM image size is less than or equal to the size of the flash part.
Verify BIOS checksum	The program conducts a checksum on the image of the new BIOS and terminates with an error message if the checksum is not valid. The program conducts the optional extended checksum if the new BIOS implements it.
Zero block before erasing	Writes zeros to the flash blocks before erasing (with 1s). Note: both the erase and the zeroing affect only the BIOS, not the DMI strings. They remain intact.
Verify block after programming	Verifies integrity of the data in each block after writing new data to the block. If the program discovers any discrepancies, it displays an error message. Depending on your response, it tries to re-write and verify again or it terminates the flash. WARNING! Because the program performs the verification after it erases and re-writes the data, the system may be unusable. If this happens, reboot the system with the Crisis Recovery Diskette.
Disable Axx swapping automatic detection	Disables the Axx swapping automatic detection . 
Clear CMOS Checksum	Clearing the checksum forces the BIOS to reset the CMOS with default values.

Phoenix cME Secure WinPhlash (c) 2000 Phoenix Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved

So these flags may be usable to accomplish the flash without needing to modify the hardware.

 

I'm very interested in information about flashing an xw9400 motherboard with a Tyan S2915 bios. Anyone succeeded yet?

 

Hallo, i flashed the tyan bios with an external eprommer and all looks fine but my nic's on the wx9400 arent detected anymore.

Anyone with such mod can post his bios (read with flashrom or some other tool that can create a backup) and tell me also his MACs so that i can insert my MACs on the correct address inside the bios ?


The only success i had at the moment was flashing the latest HP Bios (4.03) with the external eprommer and now i have the latest Boot Block inside my bios. Its not possible to flash it inside the mobo without moding the PCB to enable Boot Block write.

As already posted it think its Pin 32 to Pin 7 and 8 and not Pin 1 to Pin 7 and 8.

The Tyan original Bios and the mobos dont have this blocked "boot block" as in there .bat to flash there bios is the switch /BBL and this mean "program the boot block"

 

So you're saying that you successfully flashed the xw9400 with the Tyan S2915 bios, and the only problem was that the nics didn't work? Did you flash it without flashing the boot block, or is that a requirement?

 

I flashed the whole chip so this mean i flashed also the bootblock.
But you have also a new bootblock when you flash the original HP bios with an external eprommer as only the mobo blocks that the bootblock will be flashed.
The bootblock is inside the bios at the end of the file, check the Datasheet of the chip.

The only Problem with external flashing the original HP bios on my pc was that my macaddresses got lost and it used the default nvidia one.

I found also on the net that the only diff between 2915 and 2915-E are the VRMs to support quad and six core cpu's. (posted from an tyan employeer)

I also tested the last beta bios from tyans www and this works also on my wx9400. (but still the same nic problem) and if you compare v3 bios from 2915 and 2915-E you will see that the are 100% ident. I dont know why Tyan stopped posting there new bios also for the 2915 version.

 

But is it necessary to flash the bootblock along with the bios? Or would the Tyan bios work with the original bootblock? I don't have an external programmer, so I would have to use flashrom (when the write enable patch for xw9400 is in place) to flash the bios.

 

Dont know but i think its needed as its inside the bios and i dont know how to split it and also think that this would not work.

I think it works also with flashrom and there is already a write enable version out but dont forgot to make this bridge to enable bootblock write on the HP board. I also found a pic from an old revision of the HP Board and there is a jumper near the frontaudio connector. My Rev 003 Board dont have it anymore. There is "Boot Block" printed om theBoard near this jumper so "MAYBE" this can also be used to enable bootblock flashing.

 

And the "bridge" is connecting pin 32 to pins 7 and 8? How did you achieve this? Just a piece of wire?