MSI K7D - I've got the Power(Now)! [Howto]

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Do not try any of the above if you don't know what you are doing. If you do something wrong, you stand a chance of requiring your BIOS reflashed or damaging or destroying your CPU. I am NOT responsible for any damage you cause to your system (or yourself, however you might do that) by doing these modifications

OK, with that out of the way, there's several ways to proced: Once you have things flashed, you'll want to be using CrystalCPUID to change the multipliers. (home page)


_MF using WinFlash

  1. Make sure that either your CPU is not in mobile mode (ie: make sure the 3rd L5 is broken), or that the L3 multiplier is less than the L6 one, or that the 2nd L5 is joined (24x maximum software multiplier). The only time this WON'T apply is if you were running a modded mobile on a board that didn't support PowerNow, and had not broken the 3rd L5. It's not critical that you do this step, but your system will not boot until you have fixed the problem.
  2. Download WinFlash and the 191_MF.BIN BIOS image.
  3. Flash, and reboot.
  4. For maximum flexibility, make sure all 4 L5 bridges are joined (sets mobile mode and a 24x maximum software multiplier).

_MF using premade bootdisk

  1. Make sure that either your CPU is not in mobile mode (ie: make sure the 3rd L5 is broken), or that the L3 multiplier is less than the L6 one, or that the 2nd L5 is joined (24x maximum software multiplier). The only time this WON'T apply is if you were running a modded mobile on a board that didn't support PowerNow, and had not broken the 3rd L5. It's not critical that you do this step, but your system will not boot until you have fixed the problem.
  2. Download RawWrite (homepage is here) and the 191_MF.BIN bootdisk image.
  3. Use RawWrite to write the disk image to a floppy disk (all data on the disk will be destroyed). Reboot the computer and boot off the floppy disk (may required BIOS configuration to make it boot off a floppy disk).
  4. Run "doflash" at the DOS prompt. Follow the instructions and reboot, assuming everything goes well.
  5. For maximum flexibility, make sure all 4 L5 bridges are joined (sets mobile mode and a 24x maximum software multiplier).

Self-patched images

  1. Make sure that either your CPU is not in mobile mode (ie: make sure the 3rd L5 is broken), or that the L3 multiplier is less than the L6 one, or that the 2nd L5 is joined (24x maximum software multiplier). The only time this WON'T apply is if you were running a modded mobile on a board that didn't support PowerNow, and had not broken the 3rd L5. It's not critical that you do this step, but your system will not boot until you have fixed the problem.
  2. Download the 0.09 patches, the stock 1.91 BIOS, CBROM 2.07, AwardFlash 8.24 (or probably later versions will work too). Note that CBROM is not available from here due to potential legal issues. I'm sure Google can help you in this regard ;).
  3. Unzip everything to a single directory. Make sure CBROM is called CBROM.EXE as (opposed to CBROM207 or something like that). Open up cmd.exe (start ->run) and type:
    cd C:\K7DBios
    dopatch > log.txt
    
    Where C:\K7DBios is replaced by wherever you extracted everything to. Now open log.txt and make sure that no errors were reported. You should now have a large number of 191_xyz.bin variants.
  4. Choose one of these, and flash it using either WinFlash or AwardFlash as per usual.
  5. For maximum flexibility, make sure all 4 L5 bridges are joined (sets mobile mode and a 24x maximum software multiplier).

Self-assembled patches

  1. Download NASM and the 0.09 patch sources.
  2. Read the readme included with the source code. If you're knowledgeable and brave enough to be doing this, you should be able to figure it out yourself :)