06-11-2002, 08:49 PM
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Admiral
  
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: East Village
Posts: 5,659
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Dual-BIOS?
Was looking at getting the Gigabyte KT333 motherboard and it says it has something called Dual-BIOS. What is it?
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06-11-2002, 09:23 PM
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Commander
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Western MA
Posts: 1,183
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Dual-BIOS is exactly what it sounds like. There are two BIOS chips on the motherboard. The benefit is that if you screw up while flashing a BIOS upgrade, your motherboard isn't dead; you can use the backup BIOS to recover from. A pretty good idea!
Paul
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Paul Beasi |
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06-11-2002, 09:54 PM
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#3 |
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Vice Admiral
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: ohi
Posts: 4,525
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So why don't they do like a quintuple-bios?
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06-11-2002, 10:08 PM
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Commander
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Western MA
Posts: 1,183
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Well, I don't have the board in question but I had another board that had a dual BIOS and it worked like this: if you trashed your bios, you changed a jumper on the motherboard and it switched to the backup BIOS. However, only one BIOS was writeable. The backup BIOS was read only and was just there so that you could still boot and (hopefully) complete a good flash to the writeable BIOS.
So only two required.  |
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06-11-2002, 10:52 PM
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the admiral formerly known as overclocked
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: Outside the mainstream
Posts: 5,922
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Quote:
-OC
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But what is adulthood except a delayed end-run around our parents' better judgment? -- Peter Egan *cough* |
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06-12-2002, 04:37 AM
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Rear Admiral Lower Half
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Chi town
Posts: 2,348
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Quote:
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06-12-2002, 07:03 AM
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Rear Admiral Upper Half
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Michigan
Posts: 3,672
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toms hardware had a report a while back saying that the dual bios ssytems were pretty flawed. I would research that board pretty in depth before I would get it.
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http://ribitch.com/ipod.html |
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06-12-2002, 07:15 AM
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Rear Admiral Lower Half
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Chi town
Posts: 2,348
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ive seen a unit which plugs into the bios socket and then the bios plugs into it. the unit copies your bios then you use it and if something goes wrong you just switch over to the original bios and back it up again. i dont know who makes it, but i read about it over a year ago
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06-12-2002, 09:28 AM
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Commander
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Western MA
Posts: 1,183
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Quote:
Looks to me like Tom's Hardware likes it now. http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/0...207/index.html I believe that Gigabyte addressed the problem last year where if you flashed the wrong motherboard BIOS (which would of course toast your board), the backup BIOS wouldn't kick in properly. They updated their BIOS flashing utility to verify that the correct BIOS is being flashed, thus eliminating that problem. At any rate, the moral of the story is be careful when you are flashing your BIOS. And always research ANY board in depth before you buy it, dial BIOS or no. |
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06-12-2002, 12:02 PM
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Admiral
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: East Village
Posts: 5,659
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Thanks y'all. I don't think this Dual BIOS is anything special. I never flash unless I need to. Tom's Hardware said this is the best KT333 board out and it is pretty feature rich which is why I thought about getting it. Never bought Gigabyte though...
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06-17-2002, 08:57 PM
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Lieutenant Junior Grade
Join Date: Sep 2001
Posts: 131
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damn...wish everyone would take that advice. can't count the times when people fried the bios cause they wanted the "beta" that was just released. Problems with the system I would ask. Nope...just wanted it cause they thought it would be "better"    |
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