G400 - corrupted BIOS, need PINS

[anid]

Ok, my folks G400 went dead. Had it in a system with an Abit KA7 mobo (Bios ry beta) running Win98SE with PD 5.52, card Bios 1.5-22. The system was fine for 2 months, when it suddenly quit showing the POST screen, giving a one long, 2 short beep error code (video init problem). It would load into Win fine, but would not get vid output in DOS mode. So, vid card BIOS problem.

I tried to flash the Bios to 1.6 in Win, but the prog would return an error code every time without flashing. Since I couldn't boot into DOS (no vid) I tried using the Matrox emergency / Bios recovery diskette. It seemed to go fine, accessed the floppy for a while, quit, gave a beep. Rebooted the system and - nada, no POST, no Win, nothing. If I pulled the card, it would try and POST, give the one long, 2 short beep code again.

So, I brought it home with me to use an old PCI card and try to reprogram the BIOS to take back to them. Same problem. I am thinking the problem is in the PINs file, I can get a successful dump from it, but I can't read the new damn format.

If anyone can send me a good PIN dump from a G400DH (non-Max) and where the serial number is (with the new format), I would muchly appreciate it. Any other tips or advice also appreciated. Please help! Gregorz, if you're here still, otherwise, Maggi, Kruzin, Haig, Ant, anyone. If you wanna directly e-mail (please do), pubare@futuresouth.com . Thanks guys.

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"I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."

[Hunsow]

The PINs have a separate checksum, if you can get a dump they are not corrupt.

But here you go, all the PINs you need:

http://www1.mahoroba.ne.jp/~youichi/pinbox.htm

The serial is in line 12, the model number in line 28.

[This message has been edited by Hunsow (edited 31 July 2000).]

[anid]

See, that's kinda what I was thinking, but I wasn't sure simply because I can't figure anything else out. Progbios will run on it without giving any error messages, say it's successfully flashed, mxinfo works too (with the -dead option since it is the inactive card). Which says to me that the ROM isn't fried / electrically damaged. So, what else could it be? Any ideas? I hate to tell my folks they're gonna have to replace the $150 card that I recommended to them only 2 monthes ago.

edit: I am getting a PIN dump, but it doesn't look at all correct compared to the other PIN files. Part of this may be because the board is not active, but part of it also looks like it is simply improper values. See if you can make anything of this:

;MGA Bios Programming Utility v2.08.000d
;(C) Matrox Graphics Inc. (2000)
;
Fill: 0 127 0xFF
;Matrox G400 AGP
VGA Disabled - BIOS V1.6A


0 2 0x412e
2 1 0x80
3 1 0xff
4 2 0x0400
6 2 0xc8fe
8 2 0x0002
10 2 0x0000
12 16 ''
28 6 ''
36 2 0xffef
38 1 255
39 1 255
40 1 255
41 1 255
42 1 255
43 1 255
44 1 255
45 1 255
46 4 0
50 1 0xff
51 1 0xff
52 1 0xff
53 1 0x2
54 1 0xff
55 1 133
56 1 133
57 4 0x019b8419
61 4 0x042450a1
65 1 255
66 1 0
67 4 0xffffffff
71 4 0xffffffff
75 1 255
76 1 0
77 4 0xffffffff
81 4 0xffffffff
85 1 0xff
86 2 0x0088
88 2 0x0088
90 1 0xee
91 2 0xffff
93 2 0xffff

:filetype TOUCAN
:PCBinfo 4095-15
:SubsystemVendorId 0x2179102b

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"I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."

[This message has been edited by anid (edited 31 July 2000).]

[Hunsow]

That looks corrupt to me, only thing to do now is to find out what exact model it is. If you can't find out just pick one. Since it's rather new I think it's a model 4xx.

In this example I picked model 404:

PROGBIOS -i 897-16A.bin -s G4MD404.TXT -k

If this still doesn't work you might want to try the older 1.94 version of progbios.

[anid]

Yeah, thank you _very_ much Hunsow. I was just figuring it out, it's a model 405 (I think, that is the Rev .XXX on the board, right?). Just pieced together the PINs file I was gonna use and give it a shot. I'll post back and let you know if it works. Glad to see that someone is keeping PIN files, GBM hasn't been updating his and, unfortunately, mxinfo is not compatible with reading the new PIN structure. Thanks again, and wish me luck .

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"I wrestled with reality for 27 years and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it."

[anid]

Worked like a charm, using it right now. Thanks again Hunsow.