Soyo SY-KT600Dragon Plus v2.0

[sostate]

First time posting.
need help on BIOS upgrade.
I have a Soyo sy-kt600 dragon motherboard w/ a amd Athlon xp2600+. I wanted to upgrade the bios and any drivers for this mb as I'm planning on upgrading to newer mb and cpu and installing the Soyo mb in a 2nd computer(that one went down and not sure if it is the mb, Asrock k7vt4a+) or CPU(Athlon XP2900+). My problem is Soyo is no longer around and can not find any updates. I ran the AMI Motherboard Identification Utility program as the BIOS is AMI. Listed below is the results:



AMIBIOS Motherboard Manufacturer Identification
Version 1.4 (01/12/2004) Copyright 2003 American Megatrends, Inc.

This file has recorded information useful in identifying the manufacturer
of this motherboard. The information is listed below:

An AMIBIOS ID String Was Detected:
62-0518-001131-00101111-040201-VIA_K7
- ---- ------ ------
| | | |
| | | Chipset/BIOS Info
| | BIOS Build Date
| Manufacturer ID
BIOS ROM Information
AMIBIOS ROM Size: 256 KB
BIOS Build Date: Apr 02 2001
Motherboard Manufacturer Code Detected: 1131 - ELITGROUP
Please Consults ELITGROUP for support

AMIBIOS Build Tag: K7VKPE
AMIBIOS Project ID: K7VKPE Not listed in TAG.DAT file

For more information on upgrading your BIOS go to http://www.ami.com/support/bios.cfm?refer=mbid
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SMBIOS info:
Manufacturer : soyocomputer
Product Name : K7VKPE
Version : 1.0
Serial Number: 00000000

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMIDIAG Suite tests and diagnoses every hardware subsystem on your PC!
A professional tool for developers, manufacturers and technicians.
Go to www.amidiag.com for more information on AMIDiag.



Motherboard: Soyo SY-K7VKPE (Socket Type - A)
Product properties
CPU Support Single
Max memory 2048 MB
Number of serial ports 1
Chipset VIA KT600, VIA VT8237
IDE Ports 2
Memory type DDR RAM
AGP type 8x
Sockets Socket A
Memory speed DDR266, DDR333, DDR400
Number of PCI-slots 5
Number of USB-ports 8
Bluetooth No
Form Factor ATX
Processor support AMD Athlon XP/Sempron
Front side bus 400 MHz
Number of parallell ports 1
AGP interface Yes
Number of RIMM-Slots 0
Built in graphics card No
eSATA No
AGP-slots 1
Serial ATA (SATA) Yes
Built in sound card Yes
Built in RAID controller Yes
FireWire (IEEE1394) No
Built in SCSI controller No
PCI-e (PCI-express) No
AMR-slot 0
IDE 33/66/100/133 MB/sek

CPU Type: AMD Athlon XP, 1000MHz (10 x 1000)
CPU Alias - Barton
System Memory: 2048MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)
VideoCard: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 - 256MB



I see that the manufacturer code is for elitgroup not soyo apparently elitegroup made the mb for soyo. Going to the ECS web page I can find a socket A(462), kt600-a, version 1.0. with updated bios and drivers. the bios is from Award instead of AMI. I downloaded the manual for the kt600 and basically it is the same as the soyo kt600. The chipsets are the same but there is some difference on layout of the mb(extra pci and memory slots) . Now for the big question can I update the Bios with the Award update or what procedure is necessary to change the BIOS if it can be done at all?
Thanks for any help.

[Train]

Since you lucked out and got a real good mobo, I would not change a thing. Why break it.


Generally!
Whatever you do and wherever you buy - avoid:
Jetway
PC Chips
ECS
These aren't the bottom of the barrel; they'd have to improve greatly to achieve that status. Their failure rates are obscene.

No wonder soyo went under. :(

[Midknyte]

Why do you want to flash the bios? If things are working, there is no reason to reflash it. As Train alluded, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

[sostate]

Thanks for quick response. I was thinking same thing. Just thought it odd that there was totally different BIOS for basically the same board. I noticed the spec above says the CPU is a Athlon XP 1000 Barton, I guess the updated BIOS probably corrects it. Anyway I'm thinking of going with a Gigabyte ma785gm w/ a Athlon II x2 245 cpu for upgrade. Seems to me there was a lot more boards to choose from a few years back. Thanks again.