   PCChips M550 motherboard AMI BIOS Release 11/17/1997S
   with patch J.2 for K6-2(CXT), K6-III, and K6-2+/-III+ support.
   11/19/2006
   by Jan Steunebrink

At this moment, the latest BIOS upgrade from PCChips for this board is the
Release 11/17/1997S. This BIOS does not support the K6-2(+)/-III(+) CPUs.
Also this BIOS doesn't support write allocation for the CXT core.

To overcome these problems, I have patched the 11/17/1997S BIOS to include
proper recognition and handling of the K6-2(CXT)/-III and K6-2+/-III+.
I've made the following changes:
- Added detection of the K6-2, K6-III, and K6-2+/-III+ CPUs.
  Deleted support for the K5 model 0, 1, and 2 to make room for these changes,
  but the K5 model 3 (AMD K5 PR200) is still supported.
- Expanded the K6 Write Allocation feature to work also on all K6-2CXT,
  K6-III and K6-2+/-III+ CPUs.
  In addition, the Write-Combining feature is also enabled on these CPUs.
- Set the CPU Type display of the K6-2(+)/-III(+) as for the original K6. These
  CPUs will now be indicated as an "AMD-K6/xxx", but this is just cosmetic.
- Set the CMOS Setup Defaults for the System BIOS Cacheable option to
  Disabled. The K6-III and K6-2+/III+ need this setting to run properly.

For all other functions, the patched BIOS is identical to the 11/17/1997S BIOS,
so you don't have to clear the CMOS if you upgrade from this BIOS.

The filename of the patched BIOS is M550_J2.ROM and you can flash it with
the Amiflash program you normally use to flash an M550 BIOS upgrade.
The sign-on message of the patched BIOS is expanded with
                  -patch J.2 11/19/2006-
to distinguish it from the original Release 11/17/1997S BIOS.

Note that, although this patched BIOS has been tested on different M550
systems without any problems, it is provided "as is" and you use it
at your own risk.

I like to thank everybody who participated in testing this BIOS.
Jan.

Homepage: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/
E-mail  : J.Steunebrink@net.HCC.nl
