Homebrew With PLCC Chip (PLEASE READ)

I had some left over PLCC chips from a class I took some time ago, and thought I would try to burn them with my motherboard.

The chips are AM29F040B-JC (4mbit PLCC) and the motherboard is an MSI KT3 ULTRA which uses a 2mbit winbond chip.

I was able to hotswap them, but despite the fact that MSI's bios programming software had the AM29F040B listed, I could not get it to program.

I also tried uniflash, which would recognize my motherboard but did not recognize the chip.

The bios is not write protected ( I was able to write to my original chip). If I randomly selected another 4mbit chip with the MSI program it would look as though it was writing, then fail on the verify.

Then I got creative, I shorted pin1 on the PLCC to ground (pin 16). I used the actual pinout provided from AMD so I know I had the right pins, and there is absolutely no shorts (other than the intended one) but when I plugged it in and tried to use it it worked (or did not) in an seemingly identical fashion to the original setup.

At this time I wanted to reset my machine so I turned it off and put my original bios in (kind of forced it in because I was a bit frustrated) and when I turned the machine on, nothing happened. I turned it off and pulled the chip (which was surface of the sun hot) and waited for it to cool off. When I put it back in and tried again, nothing came up, but the chip did not get hot either.

I don't believe I dammaged the board by shorting 1/16 on the previous chip (it didnt get hot, and worked as it did before) so I am hoping it was only my bios chip I messed up.

In anycase, I am concerned that I was unable to burn (or find a program to even recognize) the AMD chips I have.

I was going to attempt to short pin one and pin 32 (VCC) next, but I never got the chance (and I don't expect I will be messing with my main computers bios again anyways.)

I guess my question is, would tying pin 1 high have fixed my problem (and perhaps allowed the chip to recognize as a 2mbit) or was I doomed from the beginning?

Thank you for reading, and for any help.

Ken
hodr@linkline.com