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Tutorials | What is hot swapping the BIOS
Publish date: 28th July 2005
Written by:
Postcode
Audience intended for:
Hardware
Hot swapping is a means of recovering your bios in the event of a power failure or a corrupt flash file. The Hot Swapping process involves finding or gaining access to a computer that has the same type of BIOS ROM chip you have now. Not necessarily the same manufacturer but the same page bytes as well as programming voltages and pin out's.
The process would involve booting the computer that you are going to use to recover your bad bios and after the boot is complete swap bios chips while the power is still applied and then flash the bios with the flash file that is for your broken computer. This procedure is not without risk as you may ruin the motherboard in the computer you are trying to use to recover the bad flash bios. Static electricity is the common enemy when it comes to any electronic component.
When performing a flash in this operation the use of the /F parameter is required. Using this switch will force the flash to go through(Award Bios Only). Also, this parameter must be used by itself. No other parameters can be used in conjunction with it.
Care should be taken if you are considering performing a how swap. SO NOT USE A METAL TOOL TO EXTRACT THE CMOS CHIP! Use a small strong piece of plastic or other nonconductive device to perform the extraction. Care should be taken when you insert the dead BIOS also. Attention should be given to the leads. These are fragile and conductive. Hold the chip from the ends and not the sides. You could easily pile on more damage tot he chip from ESD if you do. Carefully insert the chip. DO NOT FORCE IT! You will most likely bend one of the leads in doing this. Slowly maneuver the chip into place. A little force it fine, just be careful to not push to hard.
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