Boohoohoo..Help...sob..

[Andyddr]

I bought a Gigabyte Radeon 8500 64DDR and could not get the TV out to work correctly. So reading through different forums on the net I came to the conclusion that flashing the bios is the only way to solve the porblem.

I downloaded the bios with a flash utility from Gigabyte`s website and unzipped it. I then restarted in dos and proceeded to lash. The first time around I had an error message about checksums (I think) not being correct. I check to make sure that I had typed everything in correctly and tried again.....the system froze as I was flashing (the bios that is). So I left it running for a while hoping it was only taking a bit longer than usual. Well I now have a non-working 8500. My question to you is, is there anyway of reversing this and do I have an recorse if I take the card back to the retailer? How do they know that the bios has been flashed and has failed if the card is dead?

Thanks in advance


Your new hardware is out-of-date

 

[UoMDeacon]

I'm very curious as to how you came to the conclusion that flashing the bios was the only solution. As far as I know, for the 8500 cards, flashing the bios was usually only used to allow for more voltage changes. Anyway. It will all depend on where you bought the card. If you bought it from some local store, they'll probably just exchange the card with you. Hopefully your conscience will bother you though.

 

[Andyddr]

Thanks for the reply and sorry to multi-post the same message, I don`t know what happened ( I`ll try to delete them later when I don`t get an error message saying that I can`t delete ).

This is what the new flash was supposed to do (as on Gigabyte`s site:

1. Release Version: F3
2. ECLK/MCLK is 275/275MHz
3. File name: AP64DH.F3
4. Check sum: 5B00
5. Solve some TV-out issue

Number 5 was the one I was most interested in. And yes it will bother me, but i`ve learn`t a lesson...leave thing you don`t know about to the profesionals.





Your new hardware is out-of-date

 

[UoMDeacon]

Ahhh...I had no realised that you pulled the BIOS flash off of Gigabyte's own website. I think you should contact them for the support then, most likely, I think they would help you out.

 

[phsstpok]

<b>Recovering from a bad video bios flash</b>

Get another copy of the video bios from another source, just to be certain the one you have is not corrupt.

Create a bootable floppy.

On the floppy put the bios file and the flash program.

Also, on the floppy create an Autoexec.bat file (text file). Inside this file you want the command(s) to flash the video BIOS. Try to set up the commands so that no user inputs are needed. If you can't do this then you will be typing blind.

There is a third choice if user inputs are needed. You'll need to know what keystrokes must be typed but the keystrokes can be enterered into a second text file. Call it Keys.txt.

Anyway, I don't know the name of your video flash program but for example you Autoexec.bat file might look like this:

<b>Autoexec.bat</b> (no user input needed)

vgaflash r8500.bin

or

<b>Autoexec.bat</b> (keystrokes version)

vgaflash r8500.bin<keys.txt

Note: the "<keys.txt" instructs the DOS command processor to take the input from the keys.txt file instead of the keyboard.

Good luck!

By the way, one post with your problem is sufficient! I see three posts in this forum alone.



<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 07/15/02 03:23 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[bront]

Don't worry about it if it was an official BIOS upgrade. They should be able to help you fix it in that case. I think he thought you were flashing a non-standard BIOS for the card, and in that case, it would void the waranty.

English is phun.

 

[Andyddr]

Thanks for all the input. I`m going to try the bootable disk option first and if that does not work I`m taking it back. Sorry again about all the posts for the same problem, but I can`t seem to delete the other two posts. keep getting an error saying :

We cannot proceed.

We encountered a problem. The reason reported was:

This is not necessarily an error. If you feel this is an error then it could be something as simple as your browser not being set to accept cookies. If you feel this error is a problem with the server then please contact webmaster@tomshardware.com and let us know what exactly went wrong so it can be fixed as soon as possible. Otherwise, please use your back button to return to the previous page.

Thanks again for all the support!





Your new hardware is out-of-date

 

[phsstpok]

I forgot to mention. Because your first video BIOS flash was a failure your system might detect a video error at POST time. It could take a while for your PC to get past this error but eventually it will. The floppy will eventually boot. Give it 10 or 15 minutes before you reboot. (Don't forget to take the floppy out of the drive!)

<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b>

 

[Andyddr]

Thanks to everyone that posted. The floppy trick worked!!! I took a win98 bootable disk, deleted all the cd-rom stuff off and loaded the bios stuff. Then added "atiflash -p 0 ad64dh.f2" in the autoexec.bat file.

Thanks again!!

Your new hardware is out-of-date

 

[phsstpok]

Glad it worked!

Be careful with that floppy! Leaving it in the wrong PC could be bad. Some flash programs don't care what video card is installed.

<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b>

 

[cakecake]

Wow... nice. Sorry about my post of Death. Glad it's working again.

This little cathode light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine!