My attempt at fixing Miflash.com problem on my Tiny/Mitac 6120N Laptop
Recently I've spent quite a lot of time trying to revive my old laptop - Tiny/Mitac 6120N. I bought it eight years ago and at the time it was top of the line - Pentium III 700 MHz, 64Mb RAM, 12Gb HD, DVD ROM, etc. It served me well, however about two years ago it stopped booting up giving me the following message:
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Starting MIFLASH..............
BIOS cant find the MIFLASH.COM file
please copy the MIFLASH to disk and press any key to retry -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since then it was sitting on my desk under a pile of papers and about four weeks ago I decided to try to revive it. Turned out the problem was with BIOS and I needed to flash it. The challenge however was in finding the correct version of BIOS since the manufacturer discontinued support for this model.
After countless hours of googling and reading various posts from around the globe (by the way, Google's "translate this" feature was very helpful since there was not much info in English on this subject), and a couple of disappointing setbacks, the laptop was finally back to life!
A couple of problems I encountered along the way were: 1) flashing BIOS with wrong file - rendered my original motherboard useless, had to get a new one from eBay (about $50); 2) broke a pin on CPU when taking it out from the old motherboard (another $7 for a used one).
During my search I discovered that there were quite a few people out there having the same problem. Since I could not find anywhere a comprehensive description of the solution I decided to summarize it here. Maybe it will be helpful to somebody.
** Warning ** Use this information at your own risk. Some repair procedures outlined here may require advanced repair skills and incorrect usage of the repair information may result in a damaged laptop - any liability is strictly yours.
Now, here is what I did:
(collected from various online sources and Mitac ReadMe files.)
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WARNING: If the Flash Memory Writer utility was not able to successfully download a complete BIOS file, your system may not be able to boot up. If this happens, your system will need service from your vendor and may become unusable. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Please make sure the laptop is using AC-Adapter power
2) Create a simple Windows 95/98 bootable diskette with only these file: IO.SYS / MSDOS.SYS / DRVSPACE.BIN / COMMAND.COM (this command will create such a diskette: C:\format/s A:
3) Copy the following BIOS files from saving_6120Nbios.zip file onto the bootable diskette created in step 2: miflash.com / project.bin / bios.rom
4) Insert the diskette into floppy drive and power on the laptop. The system will access FDD to execute miflash BIOS back to original version (1.03A)
At this point my system came back to life and booted up.
5) This step is optional but recommended - Update BIOS to latest version. I updated mine to version 1.07 (file 6120Nr107.zip)
Here are the steps for updating 6120n BIOS to version 1.07 (from 1.07 ReadMe file)
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Recommended Flash EPROM (BIOS) Management & Updating Procedures ============================================================================ Please make sure the laptop is using AC-Adapter power
1. Create a bootable system floppy diskette by typing [FORMAT A:/S] from the DOS prompt without creating "AUTOEXEC.BAT" and "CONFIG.SYS" files.
2. Copy the files extracted from 6120Nr107.zip to your new diskette.
3. Restart your system using the newly created bootable system floppy diskette.
4. At the "A:\" prompt, type: [6120n] or [MIFLASH R107.BIN /us] and then the <Enter> key.
WARNING: If the Flash Memory Writer utility was not able to successfully download a complete BIOS file, your system may not be able to boot up. If this happens, your system will need service from your vendor.
5. The system will shut off automatically after successfully flashing the new BIOS.
6. Turn on your computer and hold down the <F2> key to enter BIOS setup. You must select "Setup Default" to affect the new BIOS, then you may set other items from the Menu.
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As of the time of this post this location contains all the files I needed to fix the problem http://xs3.tcsh.tcc.edu.tw/~w1/driver/nb/mitac6120/
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Here you can find an overview of BIOS flashing procedures for different models of Mitac computers: http://xs3.tcsh.tcc.edu.tw/~w1/driver/nb/mitac6120/doc/Firmware%20type.htm
Good luck!
Alex Scherbak
