Laptop bios flash

[ragenalien]

I'm trying to get an ATI 3870m working in an older alienware m5500i-r3 laptop. After a bit of heatsink modifying i managed to stop the beep code that was telling me there was no contact between the card and heatsink.

Now the issue seems to be the bios isn't made for this card (the card being too new). Now i've read several stories of the m9750 working with this card without any bios modifications. Since they came with the same generation of processors, exactly the same one can be used in either, my question is if i flash the m9750 bios on the m5500i-r3 would it be possible to get that card working with minimal risk of bricking the machine?

I still have the old video card that came with it so I can still boot the laptop.

As a side note would this allow me to use more than 2GB of RAM? my laptop can only address the 2 but the other can get 4.

 

[Peettreedish]

I did a little reading about your problem. It doesn't seem to be worth the effort. Even if the bios update works the video card may not be that compatible. It looks like it will run hotter which means you will have to upgrade video cooling, and even then the card may not run at its max. They did say that there were many successful upgrades to the 8600m.

 

[ragenalien]

Well I may be in a bit of a pickle anyway right now. I'm trying to flash the m9750 bios but after I tell it to run it goes to a different screen and displays in red "Please plug the AC adaptor before update new KBC code!"

I've already flashed the bios to two other ones (made for this laptop) but this one has decided to be stubborn. Anyone want to give me a link to the m9750 bios just in case I have the wrong one?

 

[Peettreedish]

What it seems to be is that you may have to sign up at My Hive. Then you can download the bios updates that you need. From what I understand you need to download the installer and burn it to disk and then boot to that disk. Also I read that another person was having trouble updating the bios on the same model machine. They solved this by removing the hdd while updating the bios.

 

[ragenalien]

Well I know how to update the bios, heck I know how to do slight modifying to them. Not that its helping at all.