@Pacman

Yes, I definitely have it named correctly on both sticks. For completion sake, I also tried putting a copy of it with the original name on the stick too.

I did not try every port, just the top ones and the front ones. When messing with it, I couldn't tell if the front panel or top row were being read first, but it was definitely one of them. I am going to try to fill up the FAT formatted stick with every BIOS version I have, and will cycle the ports when I do it. I formatted it specifically to FAT 16 per the Mobo's user guide as well. I did skip the CMOS reset after crashing the BIOS, however, so that needs to go on the list of things to try too.

That post might be onto something! Thanks for the lead. I will throw a copy on there with the M3a32mvp.ROM name and see what happens. I believe the manual did say the AMIBOOT.ROM was what was expected, but that isn't working. Everything is worth a shot right now.

It is like starting all over again...

Whats wrong with just getting a ch341a?

The USB stick I am using with the FAT is a 256 MB that I held onto for this kind of stuff, so I know there is no issue there. It is a single 256MB partition. The other one I made the MS-DOS format on is only like 64MB, but the MS-DOS partition turned it into like 1MB if I remember correctly. The 256MB was a MONSTER when I bought it over 10 years ago, for the record! :p

And yes, the sticks continuously blink, regardless of whether I do the ctrl+home combo. I left everything to bake for over an hour, and nothing. Need to spend a day cycling the stick all loaded with the different ROM names, I suppose. The continuous blinking does concern me-- I fear the system is not actually reading them, just pulsing power (screaming) at every port, since the keyboard light blinks on and off too.

I tried a PS/2 keyboard, and the system had serious issues detecting the keys (wouldn't recognize the alt-F2 that it had no issue picking up with the USB keyboard). I tested it, and know the keyboard works too. I have both plugged in, and have tried the combo on both.

Making the USB drives now, loaded up with every type of BIOS name, and every version I could find.

The oddities continue;

The indicator lights on the USB sticks will light up and indicate activity, even if I do not touch the keyboard.

HOWEVER, they only do this is the IDE DVD drive is plugged in. Unplugged, and there is nothing. It still seems that nothing is moving forward, regardless of the indicator light activity. I tried all of the steps with the IDE drive unplugged as well as plugged in, and still nothing moved forward.

I tried clearing the CMOS before hand this time, still nothing. Also moved around the three sticks (Formatted as MS-DOS boot disk, FAT, and FAT32) and tried the keyboard combo each time on a PS/2 keyboard. The system seems to like the MS-DOS stick the best, as it will only light up the FAT32 one if the MS-DOS one is not plugged in, and where they are plugged in makes no difference. The FAT one has no light, so I have no clue what it is doing.

I am thinking of burning some kind of recovery disc, because I can hear the system spinning it up. It wants to read from it, and ignores the USB sticks if the drive is unplugged. What kind of disc and format should I try to feed it?

@Pacman

ARGH!!! I wish I saw this earlier!! Here it is, right in the whitepages:

<CTRL><HOME> is the standard keystroke to initiate BIOS recovery, which also clears CMOS after
programming. <CTRL><PGDN> will initiate BIOS recovery without clearing CMOS. <CTRL><PGUP> will
initiate BIOS recovery while clearing CMOS & NVRAM.

That was all I needed from the start! CURSES.

Well, new stuff to try. *Hopefully* one of those works... And I hope this will show up on Google for the next poor soul who stumbles into this bug!

@Pacman

Just tried again today. Been at it for hours, swapping in different combos of discs and USB sticks, using both the ctrl+home combo and ctrl + pg up, on both a PS2 keyboard and USB keyboard. Nothing is working. I think it is time for surgery.

Dug around the mobo and found the first bit of good news;

It's socketed. Thank gawd. No major surgery needed!

What is the easiest method to get this done? I wouldn't mind spending 10 bucks on one of those Chinese chip programmers either... I am sure it would come in handy again at some point! I don't know how reliable they are, however.