Safe to flash m5a bios on a z33ae?

Im getting lots of pci interrupt errors with every distro of linux that I try. Some linux "experts" have tried everything to determine why I am getting these interrupts and failed. They suggested to me that my bios may be outdated. I have the latest bios (205) from asus for my z33ae. However, i noticed that the m5a has a newer bios (206). Is it safe to flash the m5a's bios, being they are basically the same notebook?

 

If I understand this correctly: you want to use the BIOS code from another type of laptop into your model. Probably not going to work...

 

the z33ae is basically the same piece of hardware as the m5a. "basically". In fact i think the current z33ae bios is just an older m5a bios.

 

Unless there's definitive proof that it is the "same" laptop, you take your chances.

I can relate to you in that my Z63A is one of the batches that came out and had a W3A BIOS preloaded into it. However, I wouldn't dare try to upgrade it, since if it gets bricked, there is absolutely no way to revert it short of sending it back to ASUS (in which case, you voided your warranty by loading a BIOS into your computer which doesn't belong).

 

Well, the M5A and Z33Ae are identical except for the fact that the M5A is sold as an Ensemble notebook; the other difference is that the Z33Ae has 512Mb of RAM built in, whereas the M5A/Z33A only has 256 Mb. I think if you flash the M5A BIOS on you computer, it should work

I'm flashed many W3A Bioses on my Z63A before with no ill-effects... I do it because they don't really release new BIOSes for the Z63A anymore. Just make sure you download the M5Ae BIOS.

 

m5a was the z33 overseas. its fairly safe. worst case scenario winflash will not allow it.

 

safely flashed the bios, but i still get tons of acpi errors. My proc wont scale unless i use a 386 kernel.

 

guessing you are using linux there? try windows works just fine

 

Ubuntu lines my Z33 just fine, and there is a whole LinuxOnLaptops page on the M5/Z33 with no problems. It's a standard intel chipset so unless you're trying to build Gentoo from stage 0 you should be fine.

 

Jumper, what version of ubuntu are you using? and what kernel? It works fine if i use a 386 kernel, but this is strange. Type dmesg in a terminal, do you see many acpi errors / interrupts?