Let's revive a 486 Soyo SY-025R mainboard with a sneaky secret
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- Опубликовано: 4 фев 2022
- In this video I would like to show an interesting case and why I really don't like to repair something, where someone else previously was trying own luck. The Soyo SY-025R is a nice board, but this exemplar had a very sneaky secret.
Ultimate Retro entry:
www.ultimateretro.net/en/moth...
Atheatos Channel:
/ atheatos
Patreon:
/ necroware 
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Learned more about BIOS today than in the previous 30 years.
(In my defense, I've never run into a totally wrong BIOS. But I have seen 'em crippled; now I know how to fix.)
Great catch on the BIOS chip. Most people wouldn't have caught it. Cheeky stunt.
It's a trap
22:34 But we like watching you repair board traces and battery damage. Please don't do things off camera, it's valuable content and entertaining to watch. :)
Completely agree!
Yes
i agree
There can never be enough battery damage repair footage ;) ... at least i wouldn't mind ... i would watch it :).
Next time I'll keep it in mind ;)
@@necro_ware Hi my friend!! Yes, the like button is adding up... Your fans demand it! Dont let your fans down... I have learned something new today. That bios tool is great. Fantastic video as always
Thank you Jorge! ;)
Dude, you are a wizard. This is life changing info. Thank you immensely.
Wow... I had no idea there were tools as capable/advanced as modbin. This is an eye opener to me.
Makes me wonder why so many features were disabled on the bios from retro hardware. I mean, external cache should always have been available.
I may have an idea... it may have been a custom BIOS mod by some computer shop to enable them to sell later the customer an "upgrade" which makes their computer instantly faster.
@@stamasd8500 That sounds shady and conspirationist af. I sure hope it wasn't common practice back in those days. Surely the tools we have today to customize BIOS didn't exist during the early 1990s?
Most likely, this ROM image is from one of those scammy boards with fake cache chips. It can't hurt you if you don't know it's there, right?
@@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365 Or at least enabled by default.
A lot of OEM manufacturers did such modifications to non OEM motherboards. They are still doing that to this day.
One very obvious motherboard I came across was an Asus A7N8X-LA, which was a very capable board, but had all of the features for overclocking removed. CPU detection was supposed to be automatically, so everything was as standard, so there couldn’t be more editable settings in the BIOS that would cripple the computer when edited by a user without any knowledge of what he/she/it’s doing.
I always assumed those BIOS were compiled from source(assembly), and would contain only the code for the features that are included. It's interesting to know the bios rom is actually "full featured" and just configured to not have certain options visible.
And now that I know this, I am annoyed to no end!
@@Merescat Why? That opens up a world of options that wouldn’t have been there if each image were assembled specifically for the target board.
@@nickwallette6201 I guess the context of my reply is missing.
@@Merescat I'd bet money that the Award BIOS royalties varied with what options were en/disabled.
At least it was an easier fix than modern processor feature-gating.
@@CptJistuce I agree. 🙂
Its better to write in name of video how to modify a valid bios
Because its really important information for a lot of people
Your channel is the gift that keeps on giving.
That BIOS tool .. man I never knew things were so customisable. That a revelation, my head is flooding with ideas for my own projects.
Doing God's work here. I used to be an avid collector 286 and beyond cpus and boards but then I quit. Your channel brings back the magic.
That's a super-cool utility.
Outstanding repair and very well explained. The BIOS Mod information are new to me. Thank you very much.
That BIOS utility is ACE!!!! Thanks for sharing this and thanks for this really nice video!!! :-]
Ohhhh YEAAA! More repair!
New Necroware Repair video? My day just got a lot better
Your repair videos repair my soul.
Wow, that program is wicked... will have to make sure to get it, that is every retro hardware persons dream :D
Would have killed for a tool like that back then :D
This is an official tool by Award from back then ;)
That was a hard program to get a hold of back in the day. I hear there is an equivalent to AMIBios too.
@@wishusknight3009 I would love to hear about it, if anyone knows what it’s called!
I loved Soyo boards back in the day. They were solid and quite expandable. I got years out of the two I had.
Who would’ve thought to check the BIOS chip! Great catch
Great video. Repairing motherboards, you inspired me to repair my battery damaged 486 MoBo. I successfully completed it. Then you taught, how to mod the BIOS - that inspires me again. Thank you very much for such a great content!
Nice work :) It was interesting to see the modifications to the bios.
I have learned so much from your videos, it's a bit scary. I never knew you could modify the BIOS so easily. Thank you very much Professor...
Knowledge exchange at it's best. Learning from each other is the best way to evolve....
Hehe, I see my uploaded pics of my Soyo board in the video. Hats off to you, sir. I love archiving retro hardware :D
Nice video. Never see restoring bios by manual.
Your videos are always a learning session for me! I enjoy them immensely! Thank you for sharing your insight and knowledge
Let me tell you a story: I watched this and used modbin on a slot 1 abit va6 via bios file and found hidden features to switch on the soundblaster dos mode for the onboard via sound! I flashed the modded bios with awardflash tool and boom: the board was dead. That was 1 week ago. On ebay I found the old "ctflasher" an isa card to flash bios chips with a turbo pascal program!? And it worked! My beloved abit board (which can handle from katmai to deschute, coppermine, tualatin...) works again! Love your channel!
Your work is great man. I ordered your ultimate rtc module in 3 different colors and will install 3 of them in my mainboards. I ordered 90 pcbs and the parts for it.
Are you going to open a shop? :)
@@necro_ware maybe someday. For now, I don’t have enough stuff to sell.
If someone needs them, he/she can contact me.
Great video, thanks!
Just wanted to mention that quite a few old motherboards with Award BIOS have an undocumented trick to unhide some extra "advanced" options by pressing a key combination In the main BIOS screen (Shift-F5 if I remember correctly on an old Soyo and an old Gigabyte board I used to own). Cheers
I remember building computers with such boards around 30 years ago. Never thought you could mod the bios that way.
I had a similar looking mainboard fro my 486. It was an real beast, I used it with CPUs from 486 DX2@66 up to AMD 586@133. It had FSBs of 33, 40 and 50, cache (WB or WT), voltage regulator, 3 VLB slots marked as 2 master and 1 slave. The BIOS was the graphical Winbios. My setup was with a VLB Trident TGui and an dual IDE VLB controller capable of UDMA and LBA, ISA soundcard SB PRO compatible. I ran Windows 95 on it with 4x1M 30pin + 2x8M 72pin SIMM. When I used 2x32M 72pin, the motherboard unleashed all its power: Windows, games, and all the software ran quick, smooth and I felt that it was on pair with my P1@90.
I miss that motherboard, but I have no Idea what was its name, model or maker. I am almost sure that the chipset was UMC.
Just a word: "wow"! Never heard about that awesome tool. Thank you!
I love the no CPU and stick wires in the socket!
I've been using this method myself quite frequently when testing motherboards, after I learned it here on this channel.
Great job. Brings back lots of memories of modding the BIOS :D
Great tool for BIOS modifications!
That wrong BIOS chip was real trap from previous update/repair attempt.. Nice, that You figured it out.. 👍😉
Was setting up a “retro Hackintosh” (Core 2, so I had to use some older tools) and faced a similar issue: the system exposed HPET but no matter what you couldn’t configure it. Come to find out they deliberately hid the option to set the HPET type despite the BIOS fully supporting it. So annoying.
Great repair dude, another one saved from the trash.
You never seem to stop finding new knowledge for me that I didnt know I was missing. Wrong bios in a motherboard? "here is the tool and a guide how to handle it!" "Looking for the right busspeed? Single wire into the cpusocket and read it on an osciloscope!" "Check cpu voltage, again single wire into the socket!" Every video you post, simply makes my head bubble with ideas how to handle the crusty old hardware I have stored over the years. Thank you, for your amazing work =) and if I can make a single wish for a video? Perhaps a "tutorial in finding the jumpers, or correct pins in cpusocket to measure, if you lack the proper documentation".
I absolutely love his systematic approach to do some checks before even trying out the motherboard with a CPU or other parts attached. no putting it together and hoping it doesn't explode.
I remember you used to be able to access some of those hidden bios menus by pressing a certain combination of keys. Some 440LX board was ctrl+alt+f9...
Ultimate Retro Project is a godsend.
I had no idea it was so easy to modify the BIOS like that, I've always been limited to what versions of it I could find
Another great video!We are learning a lot from you!
I absolutely love your videos! Such a nice mix of nostalgia for this old hardware and new information that I never even thought was possible.
Wow man, you never cease to amaze me :D All new stuff to learn here, great work! Thanks!
Excellent video as usual
thats a pretty cool program. I always wondered if there was extra setting in the BIOS and questioned how to enable them. Thanks for doing this video.
Про такую модификацию BIOS не знал. Очень полезная программа. Как всегда лайк с меня :)
Enjoyed re-watching this one :)
Cheers, and looking forward to more videos.
Thank you for the introduction to and usage details on modbin. I have been reviving hardware from my childhood and this is a wonderful tool to have in the toolbox.
This is so fascinating to watch and learn about!
Always looking forward for a new video!!!
Thanks
Awesome video, another mainboard back to service!!
Tks for the bios tricks, surely there are many bios not showing needed options.
Thanks so much for this video and for all the stuff you've done on BIOS. This is seriously become one of my favorite RUclips channels.
I also really appreciate that you keep things moving and your videos always feel like they are the right length. So much retro content is fantastic but it is very long. Please don't change.
Thank you for all of the videos.
I had this mobo back in the day. 30years later I learn why it was so frustratingly slow 😆
Learned a lot from your video!👍💪
I'm really liking the work and videos that you put out. You sir, are truly a top rank asset to the vintage/retro PC community. This video might make my pull out my own dead 486 boards and try to "necroware" them. =D
I have never seen changes made to the bios settings like that before
Very interesting (and entertaining).
🤠
This video was much more useful to me than I anticipated. Thank you =)
You are welcome! Thanks for watching.
Thank you. Great job! Didn‘t know about the modbin-tool. Nice!
Really interesting and enjoyable! Thanks!
Wonderful channel! Best success!
indeed very sneaky. Would never have assumed that external cache is disabled by default and the menu item was hidden.. A nice puzzle to solve..
that was REALLY COOL!!!! I had NO IDEA there could be sections of the bios that were hidden for one reason or another. I most likely wont be playing with any retro machines anytime soon, but it's really fun to learn about stuff I never learned growing up. I still love the intricacies of it all :D
Nice Repair and Nice explanation on how to mod a bios , thanks
my brain is blown. excellent channel. leraned so much today
Well done! :) This brings back memories of my first computer... 486DX2 :)
Awesome video! Will definitely check some of my 486 BIOS ROMs for hidden options now 😀
This is an excellent video. And a great resource for unlocking the potential in some motherboards. As I believe that utility can work on OEM machines as well.
This is so cool... I hope I will be able to use this information later.
I admire you. Your work is very interesting.
Excellent video :)
Great video. Many thanks.
Thank you! Very interesting!
I modded a BIOS in my Slot1 MSI motherboard back in the 2000s :-) it was all in Polish afterwards, and had the EPA logo changed to the Atari symbol. Ah, the good ol days.
I have a ss7 board I'd like to add some features to without needing to run utilities, hopefully this approach will work for that too. Thanks for the bios mod tutorial!
This was really fascinating. I'd love to see more BIOS modification videos like this.
Here you go:
ruclips.net/video/j1iGr9MAi6c/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/VwZT40sRMzM/видео.html
@@necro_ware great, thank you.
Very cool. The entire lets fix the bios via Bios Mod tool for DOS was really interesting
Thank you. A great video.
Fascinating! 👍
Another lesson learned... I also want to tweak the BIOS of two boards I have... and the Award tool is right what I needed!
My guess is that the BIOS you got was already altered for some reason and you actually brought it back to normal ;)
Wow what an awesome program - I'm really looking forward to finding a reason to use that BIOS tool now!
Nice work
Great video
Can not wait for the next video to learn s.th. new and exciting,thank you
Finaly new video thx :D
Very nice video again 🙂
Very good info.
That's amazing. I had no idea you could mod a BIOS like that.
Good job!
Lerned a lot! Thanx sir!
Oh boy! Great vídeo and what a sneaky detail, I would have totally missed that and maybe laid this board to rest , lol. In time: Your VGA capture looks GREAT. Can you share your capture setup? Thank you so much!
Перепутанные чипы на старых платах не такая уж редкость... А образ видимо был от доски с фейковым кешем ) Отличная утилита, кстати, но надеюсь в моих экспериментах не пригодится )) Зато теперь знаю, как оно работает! Традиционный воскресный лайк ) Ну, пойду добавлю ещё пару плат на Ultimateretro, может кому поможет )
Wow that was a sneaky trap that someone laid for you.
Never knew about this BIOS tool! Very useful :) I wonder how many L2 cache modules were thrown away because people thought they were broken or fake, but all it took was a BIOS tweak.
Informative and Entertaining confirmed.
nice work
Super nice case, thz! :)
Super! Very intresting!
Very interesting Video especially editing the Award BIOS info at: 11:05, I have a 486 Motherboard which is similar to the one you have in this Video although it’s suffered from damage due to a leaky battery & I don’t think my soldering skills are upto restoring it although I’m not going to bin it as I plan on getting some more tools and will attempt to fix it in the future if I feel competent enough & will upload a Video to my channel if I can sort it out! Great Video as always! Anthony - 🇬🇧
Thanks mate, great video.
Always great learning about something I never knew about before.
Have you done a video on RAM timings? Might be a good topic.
Great video! I would definitely like to learn more about flashing BIOS chips and the equipment that you use. I know that flashing BIOS chips in modern systems can be a very tricky and time consuming affair from other peoples' videos. Flashing the old BIOS chips appears more interesting to me...and MORE FUN! Be well! 👍👍❤❤
Thank you. Yeah, that's a child's play, just buy a TL866II+ and you are good to go. It is very easy to use.
@@necro_ware Thanks for the info! Will do! 👍👍