Flashing XFX 6200

[powermi]

i just bought a nvidia 6200 AGPO card that its supposed to be supported for the powermac g4 QS once its flashed. The problem is that i have a PC with an AGP slot, but i dont have a PCI card to connect my screen. can i flash only with the AGP connected to the screen? any other way to flash?
thanks.

 

[666sheep]

You can.

 

[harrymatic]

I went through this exact dilemma only yesterday!

You can absolutely flash the card without a secondary PCI adapter. Just keep in mind that if you bork it up, you'll have to reflash it 'blind'. This can be a massive pain the backside. For this reason, take many pictures of what's on screen - this way you'll know when and what to type in order to reflash the card without any display, should it all go wrong. On this note, make absolutely sure you back up the old ROM on the card before overwriting the firmware.

The card I tried it with (GeForce 6800GT 256MB) flashed OK, but it turns out it's one of the very few cards that won't work properly in an MDD Power Mac G4. Oh well, I'll keep searching for a nice card .

 

[powermi]

what are the steps that i should follow?

 

[harrymatic]

Make a MS-DOS boot disk (I normally use the Windows 98 SE one).

Also download the nVidia flash utility from http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/70/nvflash-5-06/mirrors and put that on another disk, along with the ROM file you want to flash.

This ROM should do the trick: http://themacelite.wikidot.com/local--files/admin:manage/MLP256XFX2_NoSensor.rom.zip

from The Mac Elite wiki:

GeForce 6 & 7 Flash Procedures.

- Flashing with nvFlash (nVidia) - Use nvFlash 5.13
Standard Procedure for 5.13: (flashing with 5.13 is recommended for the use with the 6x00 series NVIDIA cards, using the -4 switch forces flash and overrides vender mismatch)

...

a:\>nvflash -4 -5 -6 file.rom [Enter]

Force Flash (different model card, different firmware)

a:\>nvflash -4 -5 -6 -A -y file.rom [Enter]

Automatic Force/Blind Flash (In case you screw up and cant see the screen - best to use this string for a autoexec.bat)

 

[powermi]

after: nvflash -4 -5 -6 romfile.rom

EEPROM programming failed.

PROGRAMMING ERROR: Cannot program a non-page boundary

any idea of what it means?
Thanks

 

[harrymatic]

Try adding the -j flag in there as well, that may solve the problem. I have a PDF copy of the manual for NVFlash somewhere, I'll have a look for it.

 

[powermi]

thanks, with -j same problem. after reboot the computer, the PC speaker make some pips and the screen is black.
after nvflash -4 -5 -6 -a -y backup.rom

all is ok, like before.

 

[harrymatic]

The non-page boundary error means there's some sort of mismatch between the target ROM file and the EPROM size on the board - did the ROM download and extract properly? It should be 64k or slightly under in size.

On a side note, the flashing program must have written something, as the PC had no video you said - this means that the Mac ROM might have flashed after all - did you try it in the Mac? When I flashed a GeForce 3 a while ago the DOS utility complained but ultimately flashed the card OK.

Either way, here's the manual I promised:

 

[harrymatic]

Also just realised I posted the link to an older version of NVFlash - try this one instead : http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/64/nvflash-5-13/

 

[powermi]

i tried another ROM without temp sensor (tome) and flash good, after tap pins 3 and 11, all works!!!! Thanks a lot Harrymatic!!!