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Need info about PcChips M577 AGP pro MB

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:52 pm
by mamba
Hi guys.

I found this motherboard, probably an M577.

http://www.motherboard.cz/mb/pcchips/m577.htm
The specs sound interesting, 1meg cache for an AT board is good.
But the Vcore range is the weak point, it starts form 2.2V and is not good.

Can u tell me if there is a way to tweak it?
Do you know this board?
And this AGPpro chipset is ALI or VIA aka?

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 10:41 am
by Uranium235
Your board is also the same as an Amptron PM9900. Never owned one of those boards myself, but a good place to start would be to upgrade the BIOS for increased functionality.

Jan Steunebrink has a patched BIOS for your board here:

http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm

Here are the improvements he made:

PCChips/M577/Amptron PM9900 motherboard BIOS Release 03/09/1999 S
with patch J.2 for AMD K6-2/550, K6-2+ and K6-III+ support,
and for IDE HDDs up to 128GB (32GB bugfix).
06/21/2002
by Joszef Csongradi and Jan Steunebrink

At this moment, the latest BIOS upgrade from Amptron for these boards is the
version 990309. Except for some minor diferences to improve performance, this
BIOS is the same as the version 990306S from PCChips.
This BIOS does not support the (mobile) K6-2+/III+ CPUs.
Also the original K6-2/550 is not correctly supported because this BIOS
doesn't support the 5.5 x 95 (523 MHz) and 5.5 x 100 (550 MHz) speeds.
To overcome these problems, we have patched the 990309 BIOS to include proper
recognition and handling of the K6-2/550 and K6-2+/III+.
The following changes were made:
- Added detection and correct CPU Type display for K6-2+ and K6-III+
- Added support for CPU speeds above 500MHz for all multiplier/busspeed
combinations upto 6.0 x 100.
- Expanded the automatic enabling of the K6(-2/III) Write Allocation feature
to work also on the K6-2+ and K6-III+
- Expanded the K5/K6 busspeed/multiplier/CPU speed detection to work for the
K6-2+ and K6-III+ upto 600 MHz CPU speed.
- Several (previously hidden) CMOS SETUP options have been enabled to allow
better control over the various chipset features.

In addition I have applied Petr Soucek's patch to remove the 32GB IDE harddisk
limit bug, and made another patch to remove an additional 64GB limit bug.
This patch J.2 BIOS supports now IDE drives upto 128GB, provided the harddisks
TYPE and MODE are set on Auto for drives larger than 64GB.
(Note: Due to another bug the BIOS SETUP hangs when manually inserting
HD parameters above 65535MB or when using the IDE HDD Auto Detection
function of the BIOS on drives larger than 64GB. Just set the Harddisks
TYPE and MODE to Auto for any drive above 64GB to avoid this error.)

For all other functions, the patched BIOS is identical to the original BIOS,
so you don't have to clear the CMOS if you upgrade from a 990309 BIOS.

The filename of the patched BIOS is 990309J2.BIN and you can flash it with
AWDFLASH 6.28, like any other M577/PM9900 BIOS upgrade.
Although PCChips and Amptron packed Awdflash 5.34 with their previous BIOS
releases, I recommend using Awdflash 6.28 for both boards.
Please take the usual precautions when flashing your BIOS.
Refer to Amptron's web-site at
http://www.ampron.com/html/bios.html
for the proper flash procedure.
The AWDFLASH 6.28 program can be found in the zip-file of the original BIOS at
http://www.ampron.com/files/990309.zip

Note that, although this patched BIOS has been tested on different M577/
PM9900 systems without any problems, it is provided "as is" and you use it
at your own risk.

I like to thank everybody who participated in testing this BIOS, and
especially Joszef for doing the major patching work on this BIOS.
Jan.

Homepage: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/
E-mail : J.Steunebrink@net.HCC.nl

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 5:06 pm
by mamba
Thank you Uranium

Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 10:31 am
by Uranium235
No problem. BTW the board also has a re-badged VIA MVP3 chipset. Nice board, similar to a Tyan S1590 or FIC 503+. :)

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 9:48 am
by scrapuzzle
Hi friends,

Having a new 1 month old Athlon dual core PC at home I still keep my 10 years old K6-2 550 Mhz. running ok in an Elpina 9827 MVP3 with PC100 Agp Pro chips which it seems to be similar (or the same) to the PCChips M577 posted at this thread or the Amptron PM9900.

As explained this mobo has give me 10 years!!!! of faithful work running smoothly since 2 years ago with WXP-SP2, but it has the limitation of 32 Gb. for the hard disk which are hard to find now, so I need a bios upgrade.

Till now, I do found 2 bios upgrades at the net:
the one posted for Uranium235, 990309J2.bin
and 990306s.bin

So I have the doubt which is the latest one and if there is a newer one which could be found at the net?

Thanks for your help.

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:14 pm
by kalabok
i am quite sure,

the *9j2 version is the newest available on the net. it has got 128gb and k6 2+/III+ support. dated 03/09/1999.

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 7:03 am
by KachiWachi
Jan's BIOS is based on the 990309s.bin core.

I'm not sure what the 990306s.bin is (I can't find a direct link to it at the moment).

Thanks.

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 12:17 pm
by multig
Thanks mates for the reply posting

I have 3 PCs at home:
1) The older one (10 years!!!):
MB Elpina MVP3 + S, PC100 AGP Pro, 9827 BA/E-VO, Rev.3.0, Socket Super 7,
AMD K6-2 550 Mhz. 384 Mb. RAM (its full supported configuration)

2) The medium age one (4 years):
MB Asus A7V-E,
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4 Ghz., 1024 Mb. RAM (its full supported configuration)

3) The newest one (2 months):
MB Biostar,
AMD Athlon 64X2 4,200+, 1024 Mb. Ram.

They all are operative and running okay with WXP-SP2.

As you may see I was always hocked with AMD.

Referring to the Elpina mobo it doesn’t recognize a 40 Gb. HD, but I still not sure if it is the same as the PCChips M577 or Amptron 9900, so I'm afraid to flash its bios with 990309J2.BIN.

And reading the Jan’s document it causes me more doubts due he says that 990309J2 patch must be made over the 990306s and even I don’t know if this is the bios the Elpina actually has.

Even I don’t know if the eprom chip itself can be flashed.
It reads:
Award PCI/PNP 586
S/N 11501609 1997
And has a sticker over it which reads:
BURNS-IN
24HR

The actual (it has never been upgraded) full Elpina bios info that I got running BiosAgent.exe from Unicore.com is:

String: 07/15/1998-577 + ITE8661-2A5LEH0AC-00
Release: 07/11/1998 S
Date: 07/15/98
Type: Award Modular Bios v4.51PG
Award Plug n Play Bios extension v1.0A
Chipset: VIA 82C597 rev 4
Super IO: ITE 8661/SiS 6801 rev 2 found at port 0279h

Sending above info to Unicore.com (they seems to be the official Award bios upgrade seller) they say that have a new bios at 29.95 Bucks!!!! but I don’t know if it’s newest than 990309J2.

So I need your support helping me to clear up all these doubts.

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:16 pm
by kalabok
dude,

just try out. download a bootable floppy for entering msdos, use awdflash.exe to flash jans bios - and you will see, if it works or not. the programs does not let you flash if the part numbers not match.

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:23 am
by KachiWachi
multig sez -

And reading the Jan’s document it causes me more doubts due he says that 990309J2 patch must be made over the 990306s and even I don’t know if this is the bios the Elpina actually has.
Where do you see this?

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 7:41 am
by multig
Kalabok:
I think not a good idea to make this test. Handling flash.exe has its risk and I've never flashed a bios, please understand me.

KachiWachi:
" For all other functions, the patched BIOS is identical to the original BIOS,
so you don't have to clear the CMOS if you upgrade from a 990309 BIOS."
Both:
Remember that I even don't know what kind of mobo Elpina is although I have it running ok since I bought it new on 1997.

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 9:16 am
by kalabok
string of 990309j2.bin bios:

09/03/1999-pm9900+ITE866-2A5LEH0AC-00

its completely the same part number. flash it, be happy.
theres everytime a first time.

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 11:26 am
by mamba
Kalabok is right. Just do it.

Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:04 am
by KachiWachi
multig heard from Jan Steunebrink himself (Re: Patched BIOS).

http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic9628.html

Thanks.