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Almost Everything You Need to Know About Your
Packard Bell Computer
Review of Mr. BIOS
Well, the time finally came when I needed a new BIOS upgrade, but unfortunately
Packard Bell only makes upgrades to its BIOS for the newer systems.
This left me to search out a third party BIOS upgrade, which is how I found
Unicore Software, the makers of Mr.
BIOS.
Why would you need a BIOS
upgrade?
The BIOS is the Basic Input/Output
System of a computer. The BIOS is software contained on a
ROM chip on your motherboard, and is responsible for tying all the components
of the computer together; it allows the software and the hardware of your
system to communicate with each other. Without a BIOS your computer will
not boot. This ROM chip can be re-programmed with a new BIOS through
a procedure called flashing.
Packard Bell includes a BIOS on every system and each motherboard type
has its own BIOS. The BIOS you receive from Packard Bell may not
be the latest version available from Packard Bell, but you can get updates
to the BIOS from Packard Bell's BIOS
Download Page.
Packard Bell will only update BIOS's for systems that are current; this
means older systems will not have any current BIOS upgrades. BIOS
pages are only updated for a period of time after systems are made, which
means older systems may not have any new BIOS's. For example, my
PB 640 system had its BIOS updated last on 2/11/97.
Well, what this means is your computer may not support many of the hardware
features made after the last BIOS update. These hardware features
are the reasons why you would need a BIOS upgrade. These items include:
-
Support for large hard drives,
-
Adding non-Intel processors (AMD K6, AMD K6-2, Cyrix),
-
Support new peripherals (DVD Players, LS 120 Dives etc...) and
-
Year 2000 compliance.
Third-party support for Packard Bell
motherboards
Well, because Packard Bell does not support the BIOS after
a period of time, it means we need to find a third party that will support
the BIOS in our system. Unicore's popular Mr. BIOS upgrade supports
the following Packard Bell systems:
PB Motherboard |
BIOS |
PB Hillary |
BYOR |
PB 640 |
CPOR |
PB 680 |
DNOR |
PB ???? |
CYOR |
What you get
Because the BIOS is from a third party this upgrade is not free, however
the money you spend appears to be well worth it. The prices will
vary depending on which upgrade you need. With the BIOS upgrade you
also get a 30-day money back guarantee, technical support and a BIOS manual.
You also get Unicore to back up your purchase; if the BIOS upgrade goes
drastically wrong and tech support cannot help you, you can send your motherboard
to Unicore where their technicians and engineers can recover your system.
This is included in the purchase price of the BIOS. This is extremely
important in case any freak incident interrupts the flash of your BIOS
and it provides a piece of mind for those of us that like to do-it-ourselves.
Features
Mr. BIOS upgrades have many features and they provide BIOS
options that Packard Bell does not provide in its BIOS. For example,
my BIOS from Packard Bell does not allow me to set a password in my BIOS
when the computer boots, but Mr. BIOS does provide this important security
feature.
Additionally, the reason why I needed this BIOS upgrade was for the
support of the non-Intel products. I wanted a K6-2 to work on my
system and Mr. BIOS provides this valuable support. My original BIOS
would not allow my system to boot if I was using a non-Intel processor,
so it has been nice running a K6-2 300 MHz in my system.
Other features the Mr. BIOS upgrade provides are:
-
Support for Intel, IBM, Cyrix, AMD CPUs
-
Password security
-
Instant! BootTM
-
Boot any drive
-
Plug 'n Play Card Support
There are many more features; see them
all listed on this web page. I have to say this BIOS has so many
features I have not had the time to try them all out yet. For those
of you who like to optimize your settings, this upgrade will give you more
BIOS options to tune up your system with than the BIOS Packard Bell gives
you.
My experiences
Well, like I said I needed the BIOS to run a K6-2 on my system.
I originally tried a K6 with my AMI BIOS supplied by Packard Bell and my
system would not boot. But now my system is flying, after the upgrade,
at 300 MHz. Read more about how I got to 300
MHz here.
Well, although most BIOS upgrades are as simple as loading a new BIOS
onto your system, there can be an occasional problem. I happened
to have two of these problems on my system.
The first problem I encountered was minor, however it did leave me wondering.
What happened was the flash loader kept giving me an error message that
said "not enough memory". It turned out that this problem was caused
by my Stealth II video card, which was interfering with the installation.
It turned out the simple fix was to install the BIOS with the Stealth II
video card removed. This problem does not happen with all video cards,
but keep it in mind if you have trouble. Unicore also said they hope
to make the flash loader so that this will not be a problem in the future.
The second and last problem was my hard drive; after the BIOS upgrade
my drive was not identified by the new BIOS. The reason for this
(without getting too technical) was the old BIOS and the new BIOS read
the drive slightly different. The solution to this was simply to
format the hard drive. This turned out not to be a big problem after
all, the format was straight forward. I have posted the procedure
I used here.
Dealing with Unicore was a slight hassle as well, make sure that you
make it clear to them what your system is. For example make sure
they know you have onboard video. My contact at Unicore also left
and they did not answer an email I sent to them. I was promised a
final copy of the BIOS when ready and have not received after 6 months.
I am still running the engineering copy they gave me.
I would say the little bit of hassle I went through was worth the effort,
since I now can run a K6-2 processor in speeds up to 333 MHz and maybe
more. Without this product this would not be possible without a full
motherboard replacement. The combination of a Unicore Mr. BIOS, PowerLeap
PL-PRO/MMX and an AMD K6-2 300 MHz processor are a winning combination
for those of us that want speed on our existing systems.
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