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1.3.0 firmware - issues with AMD 790GX chipset?


HellraiserUK

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Recently bought a Force 3 128GB SSD to add to my existing AM2+ AMD system (it's being upgraded when Bulldozer comes out, but this is a stop-gap to appease the upgrade urge!). Installed it, cloned hard disk to it and booted - worked fine.

 

Noticed there was a 1.3 firmware out, and this drive had 1.2 on - having heard the horror stories concerning stability of these drives, decided it would be best to upgrade the firmware to v1.3 - worked fine, rebooted and now the drive hangs on boot after being detected. If I configure it in the BIOS to IDE, it works fine but in AHCI mode it freezes after being picked up by the BIOS and locks the hard disk light on - eventually it times out after about 3 minutes or so.

 

Motherboard is a Foxconn A7DA-S v1.0 (socket AM2+, AMD 790GX chipset), and drive is a new one (Serial number of 1132 something-or-other). Any ideas? I've secure erased it and that has made no difference, and have also cleared the CMOS settings via the mobo jumper.

 

Come on guys - I really want this running AHCI :)

 

Hellraiser..........>

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No worries, fixed it now - had to mod my BIOS and integrate the updated AMD AHCI option ROM. Done it now, SSD boots fine and Windows 7 works great in AHCI mode giving me a WEI score of 7.6 for HDD....

 

Hellraiser.........>

 

Hello Hellraiser,

 

i have the exact same problem with the same motherboard but a different SSD. Can you tell me how you changed the bios? Or can you send me the modified bios?

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Hi hellraiserUK,

 

could you please tell me how you modded your BIOS?

 

I have the same problem but my board is a ASRock AOD790GX/128M (same chipset than your foxconn)

 

Maybe, you could even mod "my" BIOS, too?

link is here, version 1.90: http://www.asrock.com/mb/download.asp?Model=AOD790GX/128M&o=BIOS

 

Is it hard work? Does it take much time?

That would be SOOOO great :laughing:

 

thanks in advance, of course :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Hi hellraiserUK,

 

could you please tell me how you modded your BIOS?

 

I have the same problem but my board is a ASRock AOD790GX/128M (same chipset than your foxconn)

 

Maybe, you could even mod "my" BIOS, too?

link is here, version 1.90: http://www.asrock.com/mb/download.asp?Model=AOD790GX/128M&o=BIOS

 

Is it hard work? Does it take much time?

That would be SOOOO great :laughing:

 

thanks in advance, of course :)

 

I am in the same boat. Would it be possible for someone submit a solution to this, or at least provide instructions on how to update the BIOS ourselves?

 

Thank you

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Ok, here's a quick guide for anyone with an AMI BIOS-based 790GX board (although this can probably be adapted for other chipset boards). I got the majority of the info from this link :-

 

http://etherboot.org/wiki/amibios

 

This details how to modify/remove add-on ROMs (which is what the AHCI ROM is).

 

First thing you need to do is to download the latest ROM for your motherboard (note this needs to be the ROM file itself, not some pretty self-extracting Windows-installing app, but the actual physical ROM file itself). You will also need to download MMtool (Google for this, it is out there) and a copy of the latest AMD AHCI option ROM - this was originally downloadable from the AMD website, but for some reason they have felt the need to prevent people gaining access to the link, to this end I have attached the zip file to this post.

 

So, create a folder somewhere and extract MMtool, your latest BIOS and the SB800.BIN file from the AHCI option rom zip file. Open up MMtool, and load your BIOS in. Look for the module which has a device/manufacturer ID of 1002:4391 - this is your AHCI ROM. Select this module, click "replace" and open the SB800.BIN file from the AHCI ROM download. Save the ROM, then flash it using your standard BIOS flashing method. Simples :)

 

One last thing, there's a utility in the zip file called AHCIMOD - this allows you to enable/disable certain features as detailed in the readme. Just apply this to the SB800.bin file before importing it into MMtool and flashing.

 

Hellraiser..........>

AMD_AHCI_3.0.0Ch.0077.zip

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Ok, here's a quick guide for anyone with an AMI BIOS-based 790GX board (although this can probably be adapted for other chipset boards). I got the majority of the info from this link :-

 

http://etherboot.org/wiki/amibios

 

This details how to modify/remove add-on ROMs (which is what the AHCI ROM is).

 

First thing you need to do is to download the latest ROM for your motherboard (note this needs to be the ROM file itself, not some pretty self-extracting Windows-installing app, but the actual physical ROM file itself). You will also need to download MMtool (Google for this, it is out there) and a copy of the latest AMD AHCI option ROM - this was originally downloadable from the AMD website, but for some reason they have felt the need to prevent people gaining access to the link, to this end I have attached the zip file to this post.

 

So, create a folder somewhere and extract MMtool, your latest BIOS and the SB800.BIN file from the AHCI option rom zip file. Open up MMtool, and load your BIOS in. Look for the module which has a device/manufacturer ID of 1002:4391 - this is your AHCI ROM. Select this module, click "replace" and open the SB800.BIN file from the AHCI ROM download. Save the ROM, then flash it using your standard BIOS flashing method. Simples :)

 

One last thing, there's a utility in the zip file called AHCIMOD - this allows you to enable/disable certain features as detailed in the readme. Just apply this to the SB800.bin file before importing it into MMtool and flashing.

 

Hellraiser..........>

 

How do you import the AHCIMOD into SB800.bin? :P

 

Just flashed this beauty, and it works great! SB800.bin that is.. But im wondering, is SB900.bin ment for latest AMD 890 Series boards?..

Just curious why you supplied the file :)

 

And im also still curious how you intergrate AHCIMOD. :)

 

Edit:

 

This solved ALL my problems, i could FINALLY boot my Windows 7 in AHCI mode, flash firmware and now it works perfectly.

 

I can now go back to RAID mode without any hickups.

 

THANK YOU!!

 

 

Final Edit:

 

Now thinking about what i just did, does it mean that by using RAID mode you don't really run under AHCI mode in Windows 7 by default?.. As when i booted Windows in AHCI mode it installed the drivers automaticly..

 

In RAID mode booted up in Windows the drives says SCSI, but in AHCI mode its ATA.

Confused..

 

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=637756

Here they talk about this im talking about.. But there's a major differense in Boot speed and Windows loading times in RAID and AHCI mode..

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Hmmm confusing - I believe there is another option ROM for RAID, so might be worthwhile finding a source for that and integrating that at the same time.

 

AHCIMOD is used to modify the SB800.bin (or SB900.bin file for those of you with newer chipsets - I did state that this was for 790GX, hence the SB800.bin file) - there is a readme in the zip which states what you need to do, but in order to enable SMART mode, port multiplier etc you use AHCIMOD with the appropriate command line and point it to the SB800.bin file which it then modifies - you then import the modified SB800.bin into your BIOS using MMtool.

 

Can't really help much about RAID, as I use a single SSD in AHCI without any problems....

 

Hellraiser........>

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First thing you need to do is to download the latest ROM for your motherboard (note this needs to be the ROM file itself, not some pretty self-extracting Windows-installing app, but the actual physical ROM file itself).

 

 

First of all, thank you for your steadfast response. Much appreciated. However, some of these steps are a bit above my technical understanding. How exactly can I obtain a copy of my BIOS' .ROM file? I have the same motherboard that eFCiKay posted earlier, ASRock AOD 790GX: http://www.asrock.com/mb/download.asp?Model=AOD790GX/128M&o=BIOS

 

I only see options for DOS file and a Windows .exe, no .ROM files. I apologize if the answer is blatant, I tried doing some research but I couldn't come up with anything consistent. Where would I be able to find the .ROM file?

 

Also, although I might be able to procure one, I do not own a floppy drive to perform a BIOS flash. Is it possible to perform the flash from within Windows (risky, I know), or at least maybe from a USB flash drive instead?

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Hi,

 

The file may or may not have a .ROM extension - this was just to highlight the file needs to be a raw binary dump of the BIOS, not a zipped one or a self-extracting BIOS which contains the ROM and the installer. I'm pretty sure that motherboard BIOS is only available from ASrock as a self-installing executable, which is a tad annoying. The only option is to run it, let it flash the BIOS for you, then create a boot disk with amiflash on and use that to read the BIOS to a file.

 

Sorry this is a little generic, but I don't have that particular board :(

 

Hellraiser............>

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  • 1 month later...

Im sorry for refreshing this, but im jus wondering, any chance the SB900.bin will work with SB950? i recently bought a new mainboard 990FX.

 

Edit:

 

Couldn't edit my bios file with MMtools sadly, might be too new. :)

 

ASUS Sabertooth AM3+.

 

Edit2:

 

Anyone knows of any other Bios editor tool?.. i really need to implement this SB900.bin file into my bios rom, so that i can boot into AHCI and flash an earlier version of my firmware, as 1.3.3 is reducing my speed on the SSD :(

 

 

Late Edit:

 

Found a newer version of MMTool 4.50.0.23, tried opening up my bios file with that and it seems to work, but i havn't tried implementing the SB900.bin yet, because the layout isn't the same as with the old version.. So im way too confused/scared to try atm. :P

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  • 3 weeks later...

Apologies for the delay, I've moved across to a Core i5 system now, so no longer have the AMD board. The SB900.bin is for the later Southbridges and should integrate in much the same way as previously, although the PCI ID may be different - it may be worth googling the PCI IDs you have listed under MMTool and find out which equates to IDE, AHCI and RAID controller modes. Other than that, if you flash the option ROM and it doesn't work, it shouldn't affect the BIOS itself so you would still be able to revert to your original ROM - I am assuming you have backed up the original ROM first?

 

Hellraiser..........>

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