How to fix a Bricked BIOS

Disclaimer:  If you shock and kill yourself, it's your own fault.

BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) has been the firmware interface for PCs for what seems like forever.  With EFI (Intel's Extensible Firmware Interface) and now UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) marching forward BIOS is slowly slipping its way into the legacy genre. The technique I describe below can apply to both BIOS and UEFI.  To keep things simple I will just refer to both as BIOS. 

Modding your BIOS is fairly easy.  You can save, modify, and then re-flash your BIOS by booting into an OS (usually DOS) and then running a flashing utility. When modding your BIOS there are some cases where you paint yourself into a corner and "brick" your BIOS rendering your computer useless.  If you modify your BIOS and then upon restart find you are unable to boot into an OS (and thus cannot flash your BIOS) you can use the following technique to un-brick your hardware.

1. Obtain a motherboard with the same chipset and un-modded BIOS

2. Boot to your OS with the flash utility.

3. While the computer is running (be careful... this is like live surgery) remove the BIOS chip from the board.  Be sure to note where PIN1 is located (there is usually a dot indicating PIN1).

4. With the computer still running insert the "bricked" BIOS chip.
5. Run your flash utility to flash the chip back to a working BIOS.

6. Power down the computer and return the BIOS chips to their respective boards.

You now have un-bricked your chip and have a working BIOS and hardware. If you've bricked your BIOS I want to hear about it -- Leave a comment below.