I have a rare, old mobo that others have hacked to add processor support into the BIOS. I'd like to do the same, but could use some starting points, resources and general advice. This is a learning project and an effort to keep an old computer useful.
This mobo is an old AMI 798 dual-P3 server board. I had 2x733mhz cpus, and tried upgrading to matching 2x1000mhz cpus, which resulted in a "microcode error" upon boot. In addition, the processors are reported as the wrong speed. The new CPUs work fine in a Tyan mobo I have. There are two possible problems that I can see:
1) BIOS may not have this processor listed, and it's settings (multiplier, bus speed, etc)
2) BIOS does not contain microcode for this CPU, or the microcode present fails validation
From what I've read, I basically need some kind of software to "open up" the bios file (decompile, or analyze somehow) , make these adjustments and reflash. From what was described, the entries in questiion are easy to recognize and re-set, but I haven't found any software that will provide any aid to doing this beyond what a decompiler might do.
Any ideas? Websites, articles, software? Has anyone here done anything like this?
Also, note that there is no BIOS updates for this board as it is no longer supported (I have the last one). And... given that it's old, it wouldn't be too tragic if it dies during this experiment. I've also tried AMIBCP and found it not useful for this purpose-- it only turns certain bios options on and off. I don't have URLs for what I've read, but do have the saved text (from years ago).
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