I've been upgrading the "kid/wife" computer with the mobo that I got from a friend, a Tyan S2060.  I bought a PIII - 1 GHZ slot 370 processor for it, got everything hooked up.  Get the bios stuff, detects the HD, I cna go into bios setup, but when I exit I get a blinkin cursor up in left hand corner.

According to their web site, I need to update the AMI Bios to 1.03, as the old Bios 1.01 doesn't recognize the faster 1 GHZ processor. Well, if the thing was working, I could do this easily.  The have alternate instructions on putting BIOS on floppy, then pressing CTRL home while the thing boots up.  This doesn't seem to work.  

Any Ideas?  I'm thinking of buying a 533 Celeron processor just to get the thing to boot, and then update Bios, put other processor back in.

Either buy the Celeron, or take it back to your friend and do it there.  He had it working previously, right?  I'd choose the cheap option.

the_reject

Try lowering the processor's clock speed or multiplyer.  This way you can fool the MB into thinking the processor is a lower Mhz and let it function to update the BIOS(reverse principle of overclocking).

Some MB use the BOIS/CMOS to do this or there are jumpers located on the MB itself to make these adjusstment.

223REM

Also, if you are trying to flash the BIOS, did you close jumper JP2?  It needs to be closed in order to flash the BIOS...

Check out [url=ftp://ftp.tyan.com/manuals/tomcat/m_s2060_101.pdf]this link[/url] for the manual, and check [url=ftp://ftp.tyan.com/jumpers/j_s2060_101.pdf]here[/url] for the jumper settings...

the_reject

Well, friend is in Kali.  I hate just buying a processor that I'll never use again.

I did try with and without JP2 closed.

This seems strange.  The BIOS is definitely ok with the 1GHz cpu at some level, otherwise you wouldn't see anything on the screen.  [Try booting without the cpu installed for comparison.]  It may be automatically driving the cpu at a lower multiplier.  Have you tried booting from a floppy (making sure that the BIOS is set to do so)?  I almost suspect that it's having trouble finding a boot device.  What happens when you don't go into the BIOS setup on boot?  

I would only add that you might be able to boot from an emergency disk and flash the BIOS that way.

Interesting problem.

Good luck,

legrue

The same thing happens, the drive are recognized, then the cursor just hangs in upper left corner.

Ok, I found the setting in the bios for Low speed on CPU. It was then able to flash!

Thanks for all your help.

PS anybody want to buy a celeron 533?

Yes, its the 133 variety,  Seems to be installing win 98 ok now.