Blind Flashing and You

[treeleaves2]

thanks for the rep....
my christmas became cold because of my laptop...
im currently saving up for a new gtx... worth $400 in ebay...

[zzpulp]

I don't want to get into a flamebait but I'd consider the 7800GTX an outdated card already. I would be hesitant to spend $350+ on it unless you're just wanting to play games using say the source engine. Anyway, good luck.

[colin29]

Hello I am new to the this note book forum. I looking for help like most people. I have a Dell XPS 1710 Bios version A07 using 7900gtx 512 Meg card. When I turn my note book on, I am getting hundreds of small green dotts covering the screen. It will continue to load into Windows xp. Then the screen is perfect, all the colors are back to normal i now can see my desktop and things look good.When I look under system propities, I find the video card has a problem, this device is not working. I then install the latest Nvidia Drivers, then my screen goes black. I restart the xps 1710 and pick last good config, then it back to Normal , but I still have hundred of green dotts on startup. I think I neeed to flash the video card bios,can some one help with simple instructions waiting for help. Thank you Colin from OZ

[zzpulp]

It sounds as if your card simply is dying/dead. I can't really advice you that flashing your card will fix anything as I doubt there would be any positive results. If you are still under warranty then contact Dell and explain that you are having pre-OS artifacts (on the system POST screen).

[colin29]

Thank you for the help, My Dell computer is 6 months out of warranty. So I guess I should be looking for a new video card, which are not cheap or just try and sell this computer as is. Question? do you always need to flash a video cards bios in dos. or can you update a video card bios in windows.

[colin29]

Originally Posted by zzpulp

I don't want to get into a flamebait but I'd consider the 7800GTX an outdated card already. I would be hesitant to spend $350+ on it unless you're just wanting to play games using say the source engine. Anyway, good luck.

Well I would need to install some sort of video card if I keep this laptop
what do you recomend doing with my dell XPS 1710. thanks Colin

[zzpulp]

It is debatable whether a card can be flashed within an OS such as Windows or Linux but there are complexities that would occur by doing such. No one knows how reliable it would be afaik. Another key reason its not done in Windows is because it would most likely require you to refresh your graphical environment which generally requires a reboot in Windows.


Cards (that you would want) include 7900GS, 7900GTX, 7950GTX, Quadro 1500M, Quadro 2500M, Quadro 3500M. Both GTX's and the latter two Quadro's are pretty much cream of the crop for you.

[Toneloc]

Hi Guys,
i also have flashed my go7800GTX in my M170 faulty. No Boot into OS possible.

At the moment i am trying to do a blind flash.
Have everything disconnected (HD, DVD) and try to boot from a USB flash stick which is prepared with everything needed to do a full automatic flash of the card.

My blue XPS lights are all on (so it should be posting) but no num-lock-led and no boot from the usb-media.

I gave him hours of time, but no access to the usb stick.

Is there still a possibility to recover it?
Can i force to boot into the OS?

Best Regards,
Anton

PS If i start with fn+power i get the symbol with "A" flashing and the one with the "arrow down" is constantly lit up.
Symbol with "9" is dark.

[zzpulp]

If you cant get it to post then yeah, you might have to look at other alternatives such as hardware based flashing (can't really help you here w/o chip documentation) or just getting a new card.

I hope you used an autoexec though because the numlock turns off once it boots something. Therefore, it could have been just sitting and waiting for user input. That's why you use an autoexec with the nvflash commands as well as say a "dir > out.txt" just to confirm if your autoexec ran or not.

[Toneloc]

Thanks.
I will do a hardware based flashing. I know a company which is doing the soldering and flashing for me. Hope this will work, because the data area of the bios chip is 2 times bigger than the bios file.
They burn the data at the beginning of the data area. This should be normal for graphics card bios. I told him to read out the data and to check where the specific bios data is stored on the chip. Then he will write on the same place...
We will see...

[diefool]

you can't just hit fn+f7 or whatever to get the second screen working?

that's what i do.

[Toneloc]

Can´t be tested at the moment.
The bios chip is already separated from the 7800GTX card.
Will be flashed on wednesday.
I would be happy if anyone could confirm that the bios data has to be written at the beginning of the data area of the ATMEL bios chip...

[zzpulp]

No one can confirm that for you since we all use nvflash. I was thinking by using a hardware method, you would try the nvflash -j switch by grounding the pin mentioned (supposing you could find a data sheet). I'd imagine the data is written to the beginning of the EEPROM but I can't confirm that in any way.


Also, from the sounds of things your card is dead at the moment, so it won't generate any output, be it to the primary or secondary display.

[Toneloc]

You are right. Card is dead at the moment.
Just testet another card and this works fine. No boot possibility with the dead flash card.
The hardware programmer flashed card will be back on friday i think.
Then we will see, if the data is on the correct place :-)

[Toneloc]

Hi guys.
I have just got my externally flashed bios chip back. soldered into the 7800GTX and mounted to the XPS.
What should I say. It works wonderful.
The dead flashed card i back in life and no zombie ;-)
Best Regards...
Toneloc