I just recently decided to enter the world of SATA by getting a Seagate 7200.12 1TB hard drive to add to my A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard. Before this decision, I knew nothing about SATA and just assumed that SATA was SATA was SATA... Boy, how wrong I was. After experiencing issues and a lot of Google searches, I eventually came here.

I tried replacing the 1013 BIOS's SATA module using both CBROM 1.98 and Award BIOS Editor (http://awdbedit.sourceforge.net/). With both, I could not flash the modified 1013 BIOS using AWDFLASH (Alt + F2); it complained about a BIOS check sum error. Using ASUS Update, I was able to flash the modified BIOS, but now the machine boots directly into Award BootBlock BIOS v.1.0. The error message it gives is "BIOS ROM checksum error" and it expects to see a floppy disk with a copy of AWDFLASH.EXE. I'm going to have to find a friend with a computer that still has a floppy drive so I can get back to a usable state on my machine.

When creating my modded BIOS, I used the latest download from Silicon at http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=63&cat=15&os=0 which is, as of this writing, 4.4.02. I figured I would have the best luck if I grabbed the newest BIOS module from Silicon. Now I'm not sure where I went wrong. The place where I downloaded CBROM (http://www.rebelshavenforum.com/CBROM.html) states that CBROM fixes the BIOS checksum when inserting a module, and Award BIOS Editor stated that there was no BIOS checksum for the BIOS chip when I attempted to generate a new checksum, so I'm at a loss as to why this is happening. Is the module version, 4.4.02, the issue here? Is it the version of AWDFLASH embedded in the BIOS? Is it the version of ASUS Update that I used?

When I eventually get this machine in a working state again, I'll just try one of the BIOS downloads from here to see if they work. If not, then I'll try downloading the AWDFLASH and ASUS Update versions from here, as well. After that, if I still can't get this to work, I'm thinking I'm just going to have to return the hard drive to the retailer and search for a high capacity EIDE drive.

- cparker15