ABIT IP-35 BIOS ROM checksum error (and solution)

Hello,

Very suddenly my kids' computer started to freeze and after a few
successful reboots, it hanged right at the start of boot, before you
have to chance to press DEL to enter the BIOS setup.

"Award BootBlock BIOS.V1.8
copyright (c) 2000, Award Software, Inc

BIOS ROM checksum error

Detecting floppy drive A media...
Insert system disk and press enter"

I managed to make a boot floppy and load the latest bios on it, flash
the faulty machine successfully as reported by the application, but on
next reboot I was greeted by the same error. Changing the battery,
resetting CMOS did nothing.

Without much hope I removed one stick of RAM, and bingo, normal boot
with the other one. So a defective RAM (el-cheapo DDR2-800, 1GB) was
enought to mimic a BIOS fault.

HTH

Lorenzo