Anyone know where I can find a BIOS update for this AMS Tech Rodeo 3M Series notebook? Model # RD 3052ECX98 It says during boot up it has Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0 MMO System BIOS V1.19EP 07.28.1998 Sticker inside says NoteBIOS A0937623 I recently got this laptop going but cannot seem to get any cd rom's to work properly. The CD Rom's show up when booting up and in the bios when set to auto detect, but almost never show up when 98 is up and running. It has only showed up like twice. The ol thing works good besides the CD rom issue. looks like amstech.com is not for laptops anymore. I cannot figure out phoenix bios homepage either. Also I was trying to find out the max ram i can install & Max cpu. I seen a MMC -1 PII 400 MHz CPU on ebay but not sure if this laptop will support it. It currently has a 266 MHz MMC -1 ASUS A7V8X AMD XP 2700+ 2.17ghz 768mb ddr 2700 nVidia 128mb FX 5200 WD 80gb SE DVD R/RW

AMS Tech wasn't a manufacturer, they were a reseller. Your laptop is probably a Chicony model MP-979A...it's old & not worth sinking much money into. The max RAM it can handle is 128MB: http://www.memoryx.net/amstero30me29.html Does your laptop look like this one? http://www.orphanlaptops.com/mp979.htm Asus A7N8X-X 1800+ @ 8 x 210MHz 768MB PC3200 Asus A9550 128MB/128-bit WinME/WinXP Pro

If your cdrom's show in the BIOS then I doubt a BIOS update is going to fix your problem. Have you looked in device manager to see if there is a problem?

Keep in mind a hosed flash will be the end game for your laptop. Better off leaving it alone and buying an external CDROM if you really need one. Jimi_l

Thanks Jam I don't know how you seem to find all this stuff. I didn't find anything about it being a Chicony but low and behold it's a match. http://www.orphanlaptops.com/mp979.htm < yep looks exactly like it. Mabey i'll try the cd rom driver at that site. I got it to recognize 192MB of ram when inserted into first two slots. I may pick up a 366MHz CPU on ebay for it. Heck I got it for $5 and spent $3 on a RTC/Bios battery. It has a 6 gig hard drive with windows 98 & office 2000 premium, modem, floppy, power adaptor and laptop bag. I figured it was worth $5 for the laptop bag. So far besides the cd rom and bad battery it works fine. It looks like it was rarely used, over 4 gig of free hard drive space, display is excelent. ASUS A7V8X AMD XP 2700+ 2.17ghz 768mb ddr 2700 nVidia 128mb FX 5200 WD 80gb SE DVD R/RW

If you are trying to read CDR media your drive may not be able to do that. Older CDroms were not capable of reading CDR as that media wasn't available at the time of manufacture. Same goes to a greater extent for CDRW.

The cd rom won't show up in My Computer 90% of the time. I have managed to see it only twice and the second time it did read a cd rw. I suspect their must be a problem between bios and 98.I have a USB external cd rom but the drivers are on a CD rom lol. Oh yea bios is set to auto detect. Device Manager doesn't even list the cd rom or any cd rom devices when it quits, yet it shows up in the boot screen. I have tried two different cd rom drives's and both are detected but neither will work or stay working in 98. The only thing that manages to work is the eject buttons. ASUS A7V8X AMD XP 2700+ 2.17ghz 768mb ddr 2700 nVidia 128mb FX 5200 WD 80gb SE DVD R/RW