EPIA Information...

[Sven Lübke]

At 01:06 18.09.2003 -0600, you wrote:

Hi Nathanael!

>the original bios. I proceeded to flash this new chip. It all worked. I 
>rebooted and everything is as it should be. It is unfortunate that I had 
>to pay $10 to find this out, since I have 10 of those chips here for 
>another project. The chip sent is W29C020CP90B. So as to let others know, 
>you can use those in replacement of the original BIOS chip on the 
>EPIA-800. I would suspect that the EPIA-500 and such would also work, but 
>well can't guarantee it.

Of course you can use FlashROMs other than the 39SF020A for all EPIA 
boards. I installed an AMD AM29F040B-55JI in an EPIA5000 and everything is 
working great! Just download the datasheet of your
chip and compare the pinout/voltages with the pinout/voltages of the 
original FlashROM. If all signals
and the access time are the same (or better/faster), you can use it.

BUT: It's possible, that the original EPIA flashwriter software (running 
under DOS or Windows) is only
capable of writing the 39sf020a chips, because they didn't implement other 
FlashROM programming
algorithms. The flashwriter which is included in the Linuxbios package is 
capable of programming
(nearly) all FlashROMs.


Best regards,

Sven