Messing with my Mobo

[keith]

Might be destroying my mobo in an interesting way :)
I have a packardbell machine and I am thinking of flashing my bios with a gigabyte bios and this is the reason why.
The board I have is called colombia II and it is a hybrid of the the ga-8siml and the ga-8simlh. The actual physical board is the ga-8siml but the chipset (sis651) and features are from the ga-simlh.
The links below show the specs of each of the boards:

http://help.nec-computers.com/sg/pr...c_columbia2.asp
http://tw.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard...c_GA-8SIMLH.htm
http://tw.giga-byte.com/motherboard...ts_ga-8siml.htm

As you can see the specs of my board are identical to that of the ga-8simlh. And I am wondering if I can use a bios from that mobo to flash mine and effectively turn it into the 8simlh.

The reason for this is that this would enable me to use easytune to oc my chip and would also allow me to use win98 properly (cos PB dont release drivers for 98).
I have already used drivers from the 8simlh and they have worked, but then again the drivers wont destry my motherboard.

Advice on this is very welcome andI understand that if I follow advice and this goes south then it is all my own fault

keith

[Mntsnow]

Well I know a few people have flashed "OEM" boards with their "counter-parts" and some have worked and some have not. Those that did not were able to bring back their boards by either replacing the bios chip with a replacement from the OEM or by "hot-swap" flashing of them in a like motherboard. This of course is dependant on weither or not the bios chip is removable in the first place.

As for asking if I would do it is an answer I would preface that since I DO have other systems I can use and if the system was one I was willing to lose permantely with the rewards outwieghing the loss I would probably go for it with a replaceable bios chip. Without a replaceable chip I would probably just sell the board/system and build one that supported what I wanted to do.

[akaBruno]

Well it's your machine, so I say... DO IT. lol I wanna know if it works. :D

[MDS]

may want to look to see if it has a remocable bios chip and if so see how hard one would be to get just in case the flash doesn't work. Or If it doesn't work it was time for an upgrade anyway :) That's what I always use as an excuse.

[Stroker]

Hey Keith if that doesn't work I have a saw-zall you can borrow.....:D