old Andara/Micron barebones pc bios

[mellocj]

A few years ago there was a hot deal that a lot of anandtechers took advantage of. It was a barebones system from Andara Technologies from Overstock.com for about $65 that supported up to a 1GHz AMD processor. I think the systems were formerly from Micron. I got one of them and it has been happily chugging along with a Duron 800 CPU.

After upgrading to Windows XP on it, I have experienced some lockups that I think might be caused by BIOS problems. Does anyone know where I can get the latest BIOS for this? I searched on Google but couldn't find any support info for this mobo. I think it is a KT133.. thanks

 

[PanzerIV]

Why do you automatically assume BIOS problems by the way? Could actually be a number of things such as overheating or bad memory. You can use Memtest for starters and see if you're memory is OK.

Also, have you installed anything lately like new drivers, etc. that you can trace the problem occurring after that time??

 

[mellocj]

Well, I figured a BIOS update would be the easiest thing to try and I always like having the latest versions of things anyway

I saw this in my system log, thought it sounded like a BIOS problem

AMLI: ACPI BIOS is attempting to read from an illegal IO port address (0xcfc), which lies in the 0xcf8 - 0xcff protected address range. This could lead to system instability. Please contact your system vendor for technical assistance.

 

[PanzerIV]

Mellocj looks like your hunch was right according to this page.

Towards the very bottom they do suggest: Contact the BIOS vendor for a possible BIOS update.

Good luck

 

[yellowperil]

I got that system, but could never get the mobo working properly (constant lockups). Last time I checked they hadn't released any new BIOS. I replaced it with a Biostar M7VIG and haven't had a problem since.

 

[MotleyCrue]

I had one of those also, but I was able to run Win98, Win2k, and WinXP on it without any problems until the motherboard died earlier this year.

This site has a version of the 1.04 bios that has been modified and the original unaltered bios. There's also a couple of old Anandtech threads saved there about the barebones kit.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~ellisc/Andara/index.html

 

[mellocj]

Thanks for the link, Motley! I think I remember that page but couldn't find it on google.