I've
had an old Asus TX97-E motherboard running in a second computer
on my home network for
many years. The original processor, a
Pentium 200MMX was still on the board
without ever having having to utilize a
hard drive recovery service. I saw a page or
something in a newsgroup about the ability of this board to run
super 7 processors (100 Mhz) with a bios update and some new
jumper settings. While the TX97-E is not capable of a 100
Mhz bus speed, there are settings for 75 and 83 Mhz, as well as
the default 66 Mhz speed used by the socket seven processors. I happened to have
an AMD K2-500 CPU laying around so I decided to give it a go in the
TX97-E.
Asus TX97-E motherboard BIOS version 0112e-1
with patch J.2 for AMD K6-2+ and K6-III+ support,
and for IDE HDDs up to 128GB (32GB bugfix).
06/25/2002
by Jan Steunebrink
The latest, and probably final, BIOS upgrade from Asus for the
TX97-E is
version 0112e-1. This BIOS does not support the (mobile) K6-2+/III+
CPUs.
To overcome this problem, I have patched the 0112e-1 BIOS to include
proper
recognition and handling of the K6-2+/III+.
I've made the following changes:
- Added detection of the K6-2+ and K6-III+ CPUs
- Expanded the various K6 support routines to be K6-2+/K6-III+ aware
- Changed the K6 Write Allocation feature to work also on the
K6-2+/K6-III+
- Expanded the CPU Type display routine for correct display of the
AMD-K6(tm)-2+ and AMD-K6(tm)-III+ strings
- Added 6.0 x 75 (450MHz) and 6.0 x 83.3 (500MHz) CPU speed
indication support
for FSB overclocking.
Deleted the unused 50 and 60 MHz support to make room for this
change.
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, my patched BIOS is identical to the
original 0112e-1,
so you don't have to clear the CMOS if you upgrade from this BIOS.
The filename of the patched BIOS is 0112E_J2.BIN and you can flash
it with
the flash program you normally use to flash a TX97-E BIOS upgrade.
Please take the usual precautions when flashing your BIOS.
Refer to Asus's web-site at
http://www.asus.com/
if you need to download the AFLASH program.
Note that, although this patched BIOS has been tested on different
TX97-E
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.
Jan.
Homepage: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/
E-mail :
J.Steunebrink@net.HCC.nl
More information:
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm
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I have been recommending awdflash.exe as a flash utility, but apparently the
bios is too old now for it to work correctly. Thanks
to Dan Smith for advice on another
utility that will work.
Dan recommends pflash.exe. Here's a link for that
utility - PFLASH.EXE. Dan
also mentions another utility called UniFlash that may also
work. Here's a link for UniFlash -
uf117b.zip
I took some bad advise, flashed the wrong bios, and had to
purchase another chip with the correct bios. By the way,
thanks to Jack Rowland at
badflash.com
for the new chip. He charges $29.99 including the chip
and gets it to you in a hurry. If you have Award bios
issues, his pages are a great resource.
ISSUES:
- Jumper settings enabling 75
and 83 Mhz bus speeds also increase the speed of PCI
devices. OK, in my case as my devices were designed
for 100 Mhz bus and have been running underclocked on the
TX97-E.
- Ram will be overclocked
something other than 66 Mhz. Again, I was running 100 Mhz
ram on this machine anyway.
- Bios MUST be flashed.
Here is a link for the latest bios upgrade for the TX97-E motherboard that
includes support for large hard drives,
0112e_j2.zip
Jumper
Settings:
External (BUS) Frequency
selection:
| . |
66Mhz |
75Mhz |
83Mhz |
| FS0 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
2-3 |
| FS1 |
1-2 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
| FS2 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
1-2 |
CPU to BUS Frequency Ratio (multiplier):
| . |
2(*) |
2.5 |
3 |
3.5 |
4 |
4.5 |
5 |
5.5 |
| BF0 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
1-2 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
1-2 |
| BF1 |
1-2 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
1-2 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
| BF2 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
2-3 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
(*) The AMD K6-II and K6-III
will interpret the 2* multiplier setting as 6*
CPU Voltage Settings
(Vcore):
| . |
2.1V |
2.2V |
2.4V |
2.5V |
2.7V |
2.8V |
2.9V |
3.2V |
| VID0 |
1-2 |
- |
1-2 |
1-2 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
2-3 |
| VID1 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
- |
2-3 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
| VID2 |
- |
- |
- |
1-2 |
1-2 |
2-3 |
2-3 |
1-2 |
| VID3 |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
- |
SUCCESS
! Here's a screenshot of my new bios information.
On boot, the motherboard reports an
AMD K6-2 at 400 Mhz, Windows, Sandra, and WCPUID all report 500 Mhz.
Notice the clock multiplier of 6 below, giving 500 Mhz at 2.2 V with
a bus speed of 83 Mhz. The processor runs a bit hot, but no
more than it did in my Asus P5A. Running about 42C at idle and
50-51C at load. Cooling the chip is an old fan/heatsink in
conjunction with Radio Shack paste. I'm also running Rain to
help cool things down. Download Rain
directly from lairdslair.
TX97-E AMD
K6-2 500 System Specs
-
Asus TX97-E
Rev. 112 M/B
-
AMD K6-2 500
at 2.2V, bus 83 Mhz beta bios 0112e-1
-
El Cheapo (but
rather large) heat sink and fan with thermal paste
-
1 auxiliary
case fan
-
128 meg of
generic PC100 ram
-
Diamond 16 meg
Monster Fusion PCI display adapter
-
An ancient
Sound Blaster ISA 8 bit sound card
-
2 Western
Digital hard drives, one 4 gig, the other a 2 gig
-
1 floppy, 1
24X CD Rom
-
System runs
Windows ME on a Netgear ethernet
Benchmarks (Sandra)
What's
Next?
Probably a better fan and more
cooling. The 500 runs hot. Outside of that, probably
nothing. The system is made up of odd bits left over from
other machines that I've built and will do a fine job as part of
my home network. If you have any questions, you can
email
me if you'd like.
UPDATE
01/11/2001 - Added a Golden
Orb heatsink and fan. CPU temp has dropped to 35 degrees C
idle, and 44-45 C under full load. The system has remained rock
solid with no blue screens since the build 6 days ago. I want to
make note that the benchmarking screens above are from Sandra
2000 and not the latest version. It made sense to me to compare
the new chip against the type of chip that would typically run
in the TX97-E and not to 1 gig Athlons etc.
06/12/2005 - Parted company with
this computer. I gave it to a niece who needed a computer. As far as I
know she still uses it and is now running Windows XP with some additional ram.
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