AA8 duramax gives post 9.0 after BIOS upgrade

According to the Abit web site, the latest BIOS for the AA8 Duramax is
aa826.zip which I downloaded, unzipped and copied to a bootable DOS
floppy. I booted from the floppy and ran RUNME.BAT which ran showing
no errors (and showed the flashing to have worked) and the end said
'Remove Floppy Disk and press F1 to continue' which I did. This seemed
to reset the system so, following the instructions on the web page and
the manual, removed power and cleared the CMOS configuration. On
attempting to reboot, the POST code stopped at 9.0, changing to F.0 if
I pressed the 'reset' switch. According to the manual, 9.0 is the last
code before control passes from the uGuru to Award BIOS. Following
this, I tried several times again to clear the CMOS including removing
battery and ATX power connectors and leaving the jumper in the clear
CMOS position for 30 mins. All with no effect.

I have brought the DOS floppy into work and downloaded the BIOS update
from the web site and verified that the files on the floppy are
identical to those in the ZIP file (eliminating the possibility of
flashing corrupted data).

Is there anything that I can do to salvage the situation? Or, as I
suspect, have I now got a dead motherboard which will need to be
replaced?