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It is actually possible if you have two motherboards of the same make/model (one of them having a bad BIOS) to boot the good motherboard, VERY carefully remove the BIOS chip, and VERY carefully plug the BIOS chip from the bad motherboard into it. (VERY carefully because you are doing this with the power on!)

Then flash the bad BIOS chip in the new motherboard.

This will work if you've got a system that has a removable BIOS chip, but most system boards today don't have that an an option, especially the clones. Thankfully, Compaq workstations have been out for a while with a firmware flash capability that can't be disabled (probably because of too many flashes that went bad, requiring the MB to be sent back.) And their servers actually have redundant CMOS ROM that doesn't activate to new version until it's passed the CRC check. Actually, you don't even need to have an identical motherboard to do it: Just need a little toy, and the proper size replacement chip, as long as you've got the microcode.

Again, if you've got a CMOS ROM chip that's surface mounted to the system board (which is the case with an awful lot of clones today, as well as name brand systems) you're out of luck.

Mark

So there's absolutely no way to recover from corrupted BIOS if you have a surface-mounted chip?

I hadn't seen any that were soldered into the motherboard. That's really cheesy, and can't make dealing with warranty returns any easier for the company that chooses to solder them in.

My Epox motherboard has a bios recovery boot option. Apparently, there is a write-protected part of the BIOS that will allow enough functionality to boot from a specially prepared floppy to flash the rest of the BIOS.

This will work if you've got a system that has a removable BIOS chip, but most system boards today don't have that an an option, especially the clones. Thankfully, Compaq workstations have been out for a while with a firmware flash capability that can't be disabled (probably because of too many flashes that went bad, requiring the MB to be sent back.) And their servers actually have redundant CMOS ROM that doesn't activate to new version until it's passed the CRC check. Actually, you don't even need to have an identical motherboard to do it: Just need a little toy, and the proper size replacement chip, as long as you've got the microcode. Again, if you've got a CMOS ROM chip that's surface mounted to the system board (which is the case with an awful lot of clones today, as well as name brand systems) you're out of luck.

That is why you shouldn't buy proprietary garbage (HP, Compaq, eMachine, and looking like Dell and Gateway are getting that way too). Build it if possible, and if not, buy it specialty...not too expensive if you look around.