LH Plus upgrade to LH II

[Robert Salisbury]

I have an LH Plus and I had heard that it could be upgraded to an LH II. By luck I have happened across a processor board for an LH II.
Can the original BIOS in the LH Plus be flashed with a new BIOS or does the motherboard also have to be changed?

[Terri Harris]

Upgrading from the LH Plus to LH II related threads (hope this helps!):

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=190806

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=131684&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=50452

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=58279

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=11739

[Robert Salisbury]

Thanks Terri,

It does and it doesn't! I have tried the LH II bios update utility with no luck. Do you know which update I could try or am I going to have to burn it?

[Paul E. Compton]

I've put the BIOS upgrade, utilities disk and EISA config images -- all (c)HP -- that I used at:

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~pcompton

. . . let me know when you've downloaded
these and whether it works for you.

Thanks to HP for providing access to these "legacy" tools . . .


Paul E. Compton pcomptonATuoregon.edu

[Robert Salisbury]

Paul,

The link you gave me doesn't allow me download those files. I have already downloaded the same files from HP. The LH2BIOS.EXE is the update utility that would not work for me. I was thinking that just in case I may be having some kind of problem getting all of the files extracted out when I run it perhaps you could try extracting them and posting all the files to the same place. That I could compare against what I get on my floppy!

Thanks for the help!

[Terri Harris]

I do not think you will be able to flash the LH Plus System BIOS with the LH II BIOS update without any hardware updates.

[Robert Salisbury]

Hi Terri,

I looked up the system board and found that they are the same. The system ROM however has a different part number between the LH Plus and LH Pro. This is as far as I can see the only difference between these two boxes except for the different processor boards. At this point I guess it would be necessary to find oout what the difference is between the two ROM's. I would assume that this is the only hardware change that would have to be made to make an LH Plus into an LH Pro before attempting the upgrade to LH II. Is my thinking sound?

Bob

[Terri Harris]

Robert, I don't know if just upgrading the CMOS will do it. The official HP upgrade required upgrading the processor board.

[Robert Salisbury]

I have an LH II processor board. This is why I am having a problem. I believe I have everything I need but I am having no luck. I installed the LH II processor board and I get no POST. I belive this is because I don't have the correct BIOS. When I try to upgrade the BIOS with the LH II BIOS update utility, it fails saying that the update could not find all the required EPROM components in my current EPROM contents or on my default drive. This is why I asked if someone could try posting the contents of what the BIOS update disk shoould have on it.

[Paul E. Compton]

Robert,

I've fixed the permissions so you can download those files now. FYI, I used the BIOS updater to upgrade an LH Plus to an LH II after buying the LH II processor board on eBay . . . no problem with the CMOS version.

Give it a try . . .

[Robert Salisbury]

Hi Paul,

Thanks.

I am still receiving the error as described above with the updater from your site. Perhaps I am missing something. Could you please tell me the process that you went through to accomplish your upgrade.

Thanks in advance!

[Robert Salisbury]

I finally gave in and took the pf40520.rom file and flashed the BIOS externally with a programmer. This worked. I installed my LH II processor board and the newly programmed BIOS and away it went. The only problem is that I receive an error code on boot. The error code is 0B0F. Does anyone have any idea what this means because I can't find it in the error codes for the LH II?