Topic: Cautionary note about Gigabyte 990XFA-UD5 and latest F8 Bios (Read 1343 times)

I stopped using GB motherboards a long time ago, HPA caused me a lot of issues with my file/media server.

Wow i really didn't know that, you can flash your bios and go back to an older version though.

The F8 version of the Gigabyte 990XFA-UD5 Bios is a "Tour de Force" of USB stupidity easily excelling all Gigabytes previous USB nonsense. It incorporates (without clearly telling you on the Support site) a system to "dumb" upload a Bios flash into a machine with corrupted Bios's (note plural).  What a good idea you may say. Well read on!

During my fight to make these boards recognise more than GPU 3 cards I had been in the habit of using one USB stick to transfer configs etc from my Desktop to the Miner's with the Gigabyte board's. This stick had all the files I needed and was also a Win boot disc with ATIFlash to do GPU bios's. Up to the time I flashed the new F8 bios to the M/Board if I forgot the USB stick and booted the Miner it just went to the C prompt in Dos and sat there.
Sometime after I flashed the new F8 bios I forgot the stick and booted the Miner with the USB stick still attached, the Miner booted straight into Dos gave the Win 95 splash, then the C prompt, then without any user intervention went straight to ATIFlash command line, the screen went blank, seconds later script appeared telling me it was deleting 4 Mb of ROM and proceeded to give a count down as it deleted the ROM. This FFFking thing, without any user input was deleting the working Bios on the M/board. As soon as I understood what was happening I ripped the USB stick out of the port, that did not stop it so I pulled the power plug.  After I had calmed down I restarted the Miner I had a blank screen for a while then the Bios started to restore the corrupted working Bios from the original back up Bios. At the time I thought that this was just a one off abberation but being a dumb shit I forgot and I did the same thing again a few days later, and recovered the same way. So it was not a one off. Later I came across some mention of this marvelous new function on a Gigabyte sponsored discussion board

What I don't know is, what happens if you let this "thing" run all the way through its routine, does it take out the backup Bios as well?? I dont want to know because these are a soldered chip, not replaceable like many other M/Board manufacturers

I have got to ask, What is it? is there something in the water in Taipei? are these guys really with it? what shit is it that they are they smoking?

 You already have a dual bios board. If you have created a robust Dual Bios system why would you need something as diabolically dangerous as this latest shit??? They have devoted time and effort into this atrocity and yet their latest F8 bios still will not boot the Gigabyte 990XFA-UD5 from a Linux USB boot stick!!!