Also worth opening the file itself in an editor to at least see if something reasonable was read --- a consistently bad connection can give you a consistently bad file!
When you are flashing a bios as the other poster mentioned, you want to be sure you have the right file and you will be able to restore it.
About SOIC8 clips, if you can't get a reliable read, consider soldering with stripping wire straight to the IO ports.
Stripping wire is thin enough that you can't break a leg of the chip.
Also, specific to Intel powered motherboards newer than a certain generation, the image should show as an "Intel PCH File Descriptor" or something if you run `file` against it. Don't use this as an integrity check though, `file` is just looking at an Intel-specific header at the beginning of the ROM file.