On Fri, 13 Jul 2012, Oliver Schinagl wrote:
On 13-07-12 12:14, David Griffith wrote:
I have an old motherboard which I'd like to experiment on and have my
eyes on a bleeding-edge board. The old one is a Shuttle AN35N Ultra
(socket 1). The new one is an MSI 990FXA-GD80V2 (socket AM3+).
Neither of these appear on the list of supported motherboards.
Tinkering with the old board should be relatively safe because the BIOS
lives in a socketed PLCC. I can't seem to figure out what sort of
package the firmware in the newer one lives in. None of the photos
I've found of it seem to have good enough resolution to tell. Can I
get some help here?
I found http://www.msi.com/pic/product/five_pictures1_2400_20110531112742.jpg
and I have to agree, the resolution is a bit to low to recognize the bios on.
My personal 'best bet' is the 'green' chip in the left bottom corner. If
you look at the south-bridge heat-sink, under the middle leg of the 'm'
there's a small SOIC8 chip with a green sticker. It is surrounded by 3
caps. That's the most logical bet, as the sticker probably has bios
version number on it.
I think I see it. In the bottom-left there is a white fan header labeled
"SYSFAN4". Just northeast of that is the chip. Am I right?
I thought I was going to have to jerry-rig something messy to replace the
SOIC8 with a socket of some sort, but I see that someone[1] found a source
of compact and relatively affordable sockets. The clearance with that
10-pin header just south of the firmware chip looks rather tight. I also
see some adapters that puts a socket on an SOIC footprint and then a DIP
adapter is plugged in.
[1] http://randomprojects.org/wiki/SOIC8_socket
--
David Griffith
d...@661.org
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