Asus M50/X55 Motherboard BIOS & MXM Help PLEASE?

Hi All,

I certainly hope one or more of you are able to help me on this one. Recently a customer of mine gave me 2 asus M50SV's, one had really bad liquid damage, the other had a DC socket that had burnt the motherboard beyond repair, so I have 2 very unusable motherboards.

Throughout all my research I learned that the Asus X55 series have the exact same motherboards as the M50 series, so I bought an Asus X55 laptop on eBay (I believe it's an X55SA and the seller told me it had an ATi 3470), it was basically just a motherboard in it's shell, nothing else. I installed the motherboard into the M50 chassis and fitted all the components (T9300, 2GB DDR667, nVidia 9500M GS reverse MXMII, etc), when I turned it on there was a chime but no display. Swapped out the graphics card for another 9500M GS reverse MXMII and had the same issue.

According to many other helpful posts in this forum, I am led to believe that the motherboard holds the vBIOS, so this is problem No.1 as I have a working motherboard that had an ATi card instead of an nVidia one. I currently have 2 solutions in mind, trying to flash the BIOS without any display, OR, transplant the BIOS chip(s) from the motherboard with the bad socket, this leads me to problem No.2, I cant locate the BIOS chip(s), i've been looking for ages now and i'm at the point where im willing to 'throw in the towel'.

I am leaning more towards transplanting chips as I carry out SMD rework on a daily basis, so "any" information would be great!

Many thanks to all of you in advance!

 

I think the bios should include both types of cards. Is there any way to verify that a) the mobo is functioning, and b) the cards are functioning?

 

Hi DCx, I can only go on the eBay seller's word that the motherboard is functioning, he was breaking the laptop for parts. One of the graphics cards is definitely functioning, the M50 with the bad power socket had spare battery so I had it running for a little while. Many Thanks!

I have managed to get the X55 motherboard to work perfectly, I located the BIOS EEPROM on the M50 motherboard and transplanted it to the X55 motherboard, for future reference the chip is an 8 pin SOIC with the number 25X80VSIG, it's located near the ITE QFP. Both graphics cards are comfirmed to be fully functional too which is a bonus as I wont have to rework one of them !

 

Hardcore. And nice.