I'll be working on and posting various modded 9800 bioses in this thread. I'll try and post new bioses every few days as long as my work schedule allows it. I would test these myself, but I have no free time when I get home and ironically, work is the only time/place I have to research this.

*** DISCLAIMER ****
I take no responsibility nor accept any liability for damaged cards and/or laptops resulting from flashing any of the bioses I post here. Use at your own risk, but know the community will appreciate your sacrifice for the greater good.
*****************

Here's a recap from the "help" thread:

in comparing the Mx800 and M9800 bios, here's some things to try. all offsets are taken from hex workshop.

there are 2 insertions in the 9800 bios not found in the x800 bios. maybe we should remove these.

at offset 6569 [0x000019A9]:
91 0080 0000 00D2 9FA5 0E25 03FF 0201 0303 00E0 1F00 0000 0000 0000 0000 00

at offset 12917 [0x0003275]:
90

there is 1 deletion from the 9800 bios that's in the x800 bios. maybe we should add this.

between offsets 21673 [0x000054A9] and 21674 [0x000054AA] in the 9800 bios which reads: 7601 FFFF

add: D201 D301 D401 D501 D601 from offset 22204 [0x000056BC] in the x800 bios

so that you get: 7601 D201 D301 D401 D501 D601 FFFF

it would be best to make 1 change at a time and flash and note any differences. then flash combinations of 2 changes and then flash all 3 changes at once.

here are the modded bioses. follow the correct link and let the suicide flashing begin...

http://www.angelfire.com/games5/clan_sh5/

mod1 has removed the 1st insertion
mod2 has removed the 2nd insertion
mod3 has added the only deletion

i have no idea how flashrom works so you're on your own.

to be honest i don't think the amount of code added and deleted will affect card functionality but it's the simplest place to start.

I don't know if it's the correct approach to ask for "suicide flashers". Maybe it should read "people with fat wallets".

any takers yet?

I like the idea of peeps with fat wallets... I myself saved up for a year just to buy this pup... im a little poor right now.. ha
however if someone did sucide flash... I would send money via paypal to help out...
Maybe we could do somthing like that... but i cant afford an entire new chip....

the cards should have a 1 yr warranty from dell

lol. as a student at one of the UCs i would like to save up for a little bit more before i suicide flash my card...so consider me semi leaning towards suicide flashing.

Why dont we set up a donation link or something? I mean many of us dont have the money to buy a new card for a suicide flash, but i am sure we could all pitch in something so that we could help out whackamac.

how 'bout you go to a dell expo, where they are showing off all their products. then find a XPS, pop in the cd w/ the new bios(es) and do a test flash there. at least it won't be your card. and dell has money to burn.

other than that... we really need to figure out how ATI flashes their cards in the begining, cause in the begining the dont have anything on them. if we can figure out how to flash a dead card then we could bring comma-flashed cards back to life. wonder how you would do that...

angry monk that is sweet.... hahahahah
ill gladly send money
but with mr9800 i send dell back, they're going to wonder why it is burnt to hell.....
warrenty... probably not...

here's some stuff i found today. the offsets listed are for the 9800 bios. these values are responsible for the memory timings:

@ 1BA
E07FDBF1FFFFFFFF5EA20102FFFFFFFF00000000FFFFFFFF00000000FFFFFFFFE07FDBF1FFFFFFFF5E A2 @ 2F1
304800007C014A0A4A0AF80124010000FC014A0A4A0A
@ 719
F04FF04FF80123010000FC01F04FF04F4401448366655801000023
@ 103FF
08

so when doing comparative analysis between the m9800 and mx800 bios, these sections can be ignored. i've substituted these values into the mx800 bios to reduce the differences between the 2 bioses.

next i took an mx800 bios w/ 9800 timings from above and compared it to a mx800 bios w/ 9800 timings + messed up tv settings (tv init-"none", tv-"off", dvi-"on" using rabit. normal values are tv init-"ntsc", tv-"on", dvi-"off"). the offsets listed below are for the mx800 bios.

here are the values in the mx800 bios responsible for those variables. and can be ignored in comparative analysis w/ the m9800 bios

@1B9 *** NOTE *** this value is also implicated in memory timings
E07FDBF1FFFFFFFF5EA20102FFFFFFFF00000000FFFFFFFF00000000FFFFFFFFE07FDBF1FFFFFFFF5E A2
@F38
11003300000422
@C924
01000F

finally, when comparing the m9800 vs mx800 bios, these segments were 1) replacement segments 2) very large. this leads me to guess that they are involved w/ the AGP interface. these offsets are for the m9800 bios. the sections can be seen when comparing the 2 bioses using hex workshop 4.23

@B687
@E489
@E8A1
@F000

pending whack's success or failure after flashing my insertion/deletion bioses, i'll post some more. i'll start w/ the shortest replacement segments and work my way up... ie replace isolated 2 character differences in the 9800 bios with the corresponding x800 bios values. then 4 characters and so on.

if nothing changes when total replacement is complete, then we're done and 12 pipes will be proven to not be possible via bios modification. 1 guaranteed result is a dead card as one of the substitutions will inject pci-e interface code into the bios

stupid question really but what happens i mean physically to the card after a horrendoous fatal flash? it does not catch on fire...nothing regarding combustion takes place does it?

i think it just gets "confused" on startup and the code errors and that just makes the card not run. it could however run wild and overheat then die, wether or not the bios flash was a success of failure.

this is why we need to figure out how to flash dead cards...

i so want to see a burning/melted m9800!

My guess would be that they flash the chips right off the production line prior to installing in the GPU. The closest you could hope to get to this would be to flash outside of Windows in DOS using ATIFLASH v3.01.

Is there any other way to do this? I mean when people hack cards (or even other bioses for different electronic components -- dvd drives, cameras, it doesn't matter) do they use an intelligent approach, or is suicide flashing inevitable? I guess we are unlucky in the sense that mr9800 is not a massively produced videocard.