P4C800-E Deluxe Compaq gaming board questions

I bought a Compaq X07 bare bones; Case, power supply, motherboard.



Can I flash the BIOS and remove all of Compaq's proprietary and have the
same thing as a standard Asus board? Will I be able to use less expensive
RAM?



Jim

In article , "James Wento" wrote:

 > I bought a Compaq X07 bare bones; Case, power supply, motherboard.
 >
 > Can I flash the BIOS and remove all of Compaq's proprietary and have the
 > same thing as a standard Asus board? Will I be able to use less expensive
 > RAM?
 >
 > Jim

On the Asus download page, it says:

***This BIOS is for motherboards purchased in a retail ASUS package.
If your motherboard is part of Compaq X07 Gaming PC or Compaq X09
Gaming PC systems, you should obtain BIOS updates from HP, as
using this BIOS may have adverse effects, such as rendering your
system unusable.***

In practical terms, you would have to start by checking whether
the flash chip is the same size as the Asus one. Making up a
hypothetical example, if the Compaq is 256KB and the Asus flash
chip is 512KB, then flashing the Asus BIOS into the smaller chip
will result in a bad BIOS image. So, you'll need to do that bit
of research first.

If the flash chip sizes are the same, the next issue is if there
are any hardware differences between the two boards. You'll
need pictures of the two boards, and compare them to see if
even the same devices are used. You cannot know if there are
wiring differences or not (because the motherboards are four
layer, and signals are hidden inside the PCB material).

If I was attempting this, I would want a BIOS Savior from
ioss.com.tw, and would want to verify that the flash chip
sizes are correct. The BIOS Savior allows two flash chips
to be used, and you can switch between them with a switch
mounted on a PCI slot bracket. First, you copy the Compaq
BIOS into both flash chips on the BIOS Savior, then use
the Asus flash tool, to flash upgrade the BIOS. if the
upgrade fails, you switch back to the Compaq image, to
continue using the motherboard.

The Asus flash tool will check for a version string inside
the current BIOS image. If it sees the word "Compaq", it
will undoubtedly bail on the upgrade. That means you'll have
to experiment with the various upgrade options, to see which
one can be fooled into upgrading a "foreign" ROM image.

Have fun,
Paul