Ok, needed to start a clean thread for this specific problem . I have a K7T Pro2-A, and, like many other people I've seen on these forums, I tried to use the Live BIOS utility MSI included with the board to update to the latest beta BIOS (as it enables 4-way interleaving) under Windows 2000 Pro. About 1% into flashing, it stopped and gave me an error, followed by rebooting the machine. Upon rebooting, it made a 3 second series of "normal" tone beeps, followed by a pause, then rapid, higher pitched beeps (which continued until the power button was held down for 4 seconds to turn it off). I tried several times to get it to boot again, but with no success. Being reminded about the boot block, I unplugged everything but the floppy drive, and removed all cards and put in an old PCI video card (tried several, from Diamond to Tseng Labs' ET4000). I also made a boot disk on another machine, with an autoexec.bat file to automatically flash the BIOS and reboot without prompting (version 2.2). I put the floppy in, turned on the machine, and was about to cry tears of joy when I saw the boot block, but that joy soon came to an end...
Detecting floppy drive A media...
Floppy A error. System halt
...followed by endless, rapid, high-pitch beeping (similar to the 2nd set of beeps on the first reboot). I tried removing the video card, but then I got the two sets of beeps I first heard. Next I tried swapping floppy drives. No success. I tried different brands, different cables, different power supplies, and made sure they were all connected correctly, but I never found a problem with those things. Clearing the CMOS did no good either. It never even attempted to seek the floppy drive. Before this happened, the floppy controller on the board did in fact work, so that can't be the problem... or can it?
How many of you Anandtech readers have experienced this problem? If you have, did you try different things to get it to work? Did you ever get it to work in the boot block? I'm afraid MSI overlooked the boot block this time, or didn't modify it for the updated 686B south bridge, which is causing numerous problems. In this thread, I'm not looking for ways to restore the BIOS, as I already have ordered a new chip, but rather to find out if this floppy drive problem is widespread, in ALL of the KT7 Pro2-A boards. I would also like to find out if anyone has had this problem, and resolved it without buying a new BIOS chip or doing a hot swap-n-flash (as I do not have access to a board with this style chip). Any info would be greatly appreciated.
*REMINDER* - PLEASE only post in this thread if (a) you know of a resolution to the floppy drive problem, or (b) you are experiencing this problem. Treat it as a poll of sorts, stating that you have the problem and if you fixed the floppy drive (and how you did it), or if you were unable to fix it.
Thanks! If this is truly widespread, it will be neccessary to bring it to the attention of the public, as well as to MSI (so they don't think it is only a problem on a few boards).
Detecting floppy drive A media...
Floppy A error. System halt
...followed by endless, rapid, high-pitch beeping (similar to the 2nd set of beeps on the first reboot). I tried removing the video card, but then I got the two sets of beeps I first heard. Next I tried swapping floppy drives. No success. I tried different brands, different cables, different power supplies, and made sure they were all connected correctly, but I never found a problem with those things. Clearing the CMOS did no good either. It never even attempted to seek the floppy drive. Before this happened, the floppy controller on the board did in fact work, so that can't be the problem... or can it?
How many of you Anandtech readers have experienced this problem? If you have, did you try different things to get it to work? Did you ever get it to work in the boot block? I'm afraid MSI overlooked the boot block this time, or didn't modify it for the updated 686B south bridge, which is causing numerous problems. In this thread, I'm not looking for ways to restore the BIOS, as I already have ordered a new chip, but rather to find out if this floppy drive problem is widespread, in ALL of the KT7 Pro2-A boards. I would also like to find out if anyone has had this problem, and resolved it without buying a new BIOS chip or doing a hot swap-n-flash (as I do not have access to a board with this style chip). Any info would be greatly appreciated.
*REMINDER* - PLEASE only post in this thread if (a) you know of a resolution to the floppy drive problem, or (b) you are experiencing this problem. Treat it as a poll of sorts, stating that you have the problem and if you fixed the floppy drive (and how you did it), or if you were unable to fix it.
Thanks! If this is truly widespread, it will be neccessary to bring it to the attention of the public, as well as to MSI (so they don't think it is only a problem on a few boards).