Why would you need a BIOS upgrade?  Third-party support for PB motherboards  What you get  Features  My experiences

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.

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:

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.

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! Boot^TM
• 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.

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.