Hi pico1180,

Because there is an HP Phoenix BIOS on the board now, any Asus flash tool will be unable to flash the Asus Award BIOS. So using a programmer like your TL866Ⅱ Plus is indeed the only way to get the retail BIOS from Asus on this TX97-XV board.

However HP is using a 256KB EEPROM on this board and the Asus retail BIOS is only 128KB. Therefore the Asus BIOS needs to be flashed in the top 1Mbit of the 2Mbit EEPROM, so from addresses 0x020000 to 0x03FFFF.
I have reports from other TX97-XV users that it works this way, using the latest 11/24/98-82430TX-TX97-XV_C-00 Rev. #401A0-0112xv-1 Award retail BIOS.

Another option is to take a 1Mbit EEPROM, like the SST29EE010, and program the Asus binary in there. This has the added benefit of enabling to use the Aflash tool for future 128KB BIOS updates, like my patched version. 😉
As you may know, these 1Mbit and 2Mbit EEPROMs both use the same 32-pin DIL package and are pin compatible.

I am using Aflash v2.02 on all Asus socket 7 boards and this works well. You can download this flasher from my site at:
http://www.steunebrink.info/aflash202.zip

Note that the latest #401A0-0112xv-1 Award retail BIOS has some limitations.
- It supports the K6-2 and K6-III, but not the K6-2+/K6-III+ CPUs
- The CPU speed support is limited to 400MHz
- The HDD IDE support is limited to 32GiB.
I have a patched BIOS that fixes these CPU limitations and support HDDs up to 128GiB.
Let me know if you want to test this patched BIOS version.

Jan

I would love to test this. but the link provided doesn't open. if i try to open in another window it closes immediately.

pico1180 wrote on 2023-07-05, 11:11:

I would love to test this. but the link provided doesn't open. if i try to open in another window it closes immediately.

The link works fine for me, just ftr.

Okay, here is the patched Asus TX97-XV BIOS. It is a modded version of the latest 0112xv-1 retail Award BIOS. In the zip, a PATCH.TXT file is included that documents all the changes I’ve made to this BIOS.

Like the Award retail BIOS, this patched version also needs to be programmed in the top 1Mbit of your 2Mbit EEPROM or into an 1Mbit EEPROM, using your TL866.
Please let us know how this BIOS works. And if you have a K6-2+/III+, a test with that CPU would be great.

Cheers, Jan

Thank you so much for this help! I couldn't figure out how to speicify the flash address in the 2MB chip, and based off your post it really seemed like a less desirable way to go. So I ordered some SST29EE010's from China and used the modified bios you provided. It appears to work wonderfully. Installed Win 98 on a 16GB SSD with zero issues. I have a 128GB SSD I may try in the future, but larger disk sizes wasn't really was just an added benefit. I just really wanted to get rid of the HP branding.

Again, thank you so much for this. I can now move this project off my bench and into the completed category 😁

Hi pico1180,

You are welcome.

Thanks for reporting back and I'm pleased to hear that the patched TX97-XV BIOS works as expected. 😀
When you are going to use the 128GB SSD, I like to hear a report on that as well.

Regards, Jan