Continual G400 BIOS corruption

[anid]

I am having a problem with reoccuring BIOS corruption on a Millenium G400 DH 32MB video card. The card is part number G4+MDH4A32G, Rev .405 MT02350, PCB marked 906-04 Rev B. BIOS version is the most recent (1.6, 897-16a.bin) and I have been using PD 5.52 under Win98. Full system specs are as follows:
Abit KA7 motherboard (beta BIOS ka7_ry.b01)
AMD K7 750
Mushkin Rev 1.5 Athlon RAM (128MB stick)
20GB Quantum LM HDD
Teac FDD
Afreey 4008 DVD
SuperPower SH-300 ATX 300W Power supply
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live Value (LiveWare 3 drivers)
USR 2976 PCI Modem

Operating system and drivers is Win98SE using ViaGART 4.03, Via inf update v1.02, and DirectX 7A. IRQ assignment is: USB - 3, ACPI - 4, USR Modem - 5, LPT - 7, SoundBlaster - 10, G400 - 11, Primary IDE - 14, Secondary IDE - 15. No devices are sharing IRQs (com ports are disabled in BIOS) and no other resource conflicts have been reported. The BIOS is set with a 128M aperture, 4X mode disabled, and Fast Write Support disabled. All video and system BIOS caching is disabled.

The system ran fine for about 2 monthes, when it gave a one-long, two-short beep code on boot and failed to display the POST screen. It also fails to display in DOS mode, indicating a problem with the video card BIOS. I put a Diamond Stealth 3000 PCI video card in the system to attempt reprograming the G400 BIOS, using the command line "progbios -i 897-16a.bin -s pins.txt -k" (clean boot disk, no config.sys file). Pins.txt was obtained from Hunsow's site for the 405B G400 DH. The BIOS programmed successfully and, after removing the PCI video card, rebooted into Win98. Win began giving the "There is a problem with your Display Adaptor" error message and was stuck in 16color, 640 x 480 mode. While trying to solve this problem, the computer once again started giving the one-long, two-short beep code and failing to display the POST screen. Now, it will no longer load Win98 either, which it would do after the first problem. No longer having access to the PCI video card, I attempted to reprogram it by adding the command line "progbios -i 897-16a.bin -s pins.txt -k" to the autoexec.bat file (only entry within the file) and rebooting the machine. I waited for floppy access to stop, hit "y" (for "yes to program") "enter", and waited for about one minute after floppy access had ceased. This was not effective, as the system will still not output any display at all. Using the "progbios -d >pins.txt" command line now gives the following:

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


- WARNING: Invalid Bios.
0 2 0x412e
2 1 0x80
3 1 0xff
4 2 0x0401
6 2 0xc906
8 2 0x0001
10 2 0x0000
12 16 'LAH19866'
28 6 '405B'
36 2 0xfff0
38 1 75
39 1 75
40 1 75
41 1 75
42 1 75
43 1 75
44 1 34
45 1 34
46 4 0
50 1 0x3f
51 1 0xff
52 1 0xff
53 1 0xc2
54 1 0xff
55 1 82
56 1 41
57 4 0x0190a419
61 4 0x24045491
65 1 126
66 1 63
67 4 0x019b8419
71 4 0x24045491
75 1 126
76 1 63
77 4 0x019b8419
81 4 0x24045491
85 1 0xff
86 2 0x0c88
88 2 0x0c88
90 1 0xee
91 2 0x2cfe
93 2 0xfff9

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

The PIN structure looks intact and correct, however it does not seem to be able to read the BIOS. Can anything be done to fix this? If not, is it likely to happen again if I put another Matrox card in this system?

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

[The PIT]

Anid if you look at your other thread GBm asks you to go to his website. I think his web site also has instructions on how to get your Bios back.

[anid]

Yes, well, the instructions on his site for recovering the BIOS is what I tried - using the progbios command line within the autoexec.bat file. Didn't work this second go around. And at the moment, I can't use MXinfo cuz the machine won't load Win and, without a vid card BIOS, I can't get into DOS. Also, any time I have tried to do a PIN dump from MXinfo, with this or any other card / machine, it has simply created an empty file. It also doesn't seem to like the newer PIN structure - I have used it several times with my G200 and never had any problems, but after I got the G400 working in my system, I tried running MXinfo and it seemed to just give me a capabilities list for the _entire_ G400 line, not the card in use (similar to using the -dead option).

So, I'm at a loss... It appears the chip is "leaking voltage" (for lack of another way to put it) and periodically discharging, wiping out or damaging the BIOS. I'm not EE or CE, so I don't know for sure at the hardware level, but I've tried everything software related I can think of, and then some. I'm wondering if part of / the whole problem has to do with the mobo, as it flashed and ran fine (for a day, anyway) in my machine (Epox MVP3G-M) but won't flash (or doesn't appear to, it's hard to be sure without video) on the Abit KA7 and corrupts. I know several people have this same configuration and don't seem to have any problems with it, which points more strongly to the card being at fault.

[gbm]

Try to recover the BIOS first using another video card (PCI or ISA). I suspect that due to some error (file not found, etc.) your efforts to restore the BIOS using autoexec are not successful. Immediately after the recovery you may use MXINFO -dead to check the BIOS while still using the second video adapter.

[anid]

Thanks, gbm, that's what I did the first go around. The disk was working correctly, the card is hosed. I've spoken to Matrox and gotten an RMA for the card. This was an unfixable problem, very nice of them to replace the card without any hassle. Thanks to all that tried to help.

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