Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2, and a bad BIOS flash? - 2008/03/02 22:06Today I tried and failed to flash Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2 with slightly modified original BIOS. I have an Acer TravelMate 5520G notebook. So ATIWinFlash v2.0.0.2 was used to save and write BIOS. An HEX editor was used to modify the BIOS file. I don't think I made something wrong, but BIOS does not work, and I can't flash my original BIOS back. Notebook beeps 3 times at boot, and than continue to load, but with blank screen. I can enter my account, hear sounds and programs load, but no image.
Tried to make bootable CD with ATIFlash and old BIOS file. Notebook loads Ms-DOS, but flashing process seems not to run properly. I add "-reboot" option to command string, but computer does not restart, so I think that flashing process is unsuccessful. The same is in Windows. I load my account, add command string to flash original BIOS, something is happening, but computer does not restarts, and still no image. Any help is appreciated...
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Lechuck
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Re:Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2, and a bad BIOS flash? - 2008/03/03 16:00When you are in Ms-DOS do you see the image on monitor or is it blank? Can you upload your BIOS here, both versions, maybe someone will figure what went wrong. And also write what you changed!
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NicolasG
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Re:Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2, and a bad BIOS flash? - 2008/03/03 17:20Lechuck wrote: When you are in Ms-DOS do you see the image on monitor or is it blank? Can you upload your BIOS here, both versions, maybe someone will figure what went wrong. And also write what you changed! No, I can not. There is no image at all. I just changed several HEX values for GPU and/or video memory speeds. Default speeds are 500/800MHz in 3D and 600/800MHz for HD video mode. I changed only 3D mode settings for 632/900MHz. I tested these speeds for 1.5 months without problems. The core and memory speeds block are quite obvious in this BIOS. You can find it easily.
Speeds for different modes are 110/600MHz, 300/800MHz, 500/800MHz and 600/800MHz. So I do not think I changed something wrong. The problem is that I can not flash my stock BIOS back. I can’t see the image on the screen, but I remember every step and do everything blind. But the process of flashing won’t go properly for some reason. Here is the new bad BIOS.
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NicolasG
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Re:Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2, and a bad BIOS flash? - 2008/03/03 17:22And here is also the stock BIOS, which I have attached below of my Mobility Radeon HD 2600 graphics card of my notebook.
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Lechuck
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Re:Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2, and a bad BIOS flash? - 2008/03/03 21:10I see you didn't correct the checksum, the original is 9300, the modified is 954E. On the lines where you changed the frequencies is still entered 1.00V. Maybe that's a problem too. I don't have enough experience with mobile BIOS to comment if you edited correct lines. You edited 4th and 13th line of PowerPlay bloc, the. 4th should be 3D, for 13th I don't know what's for.
I'd suggest to try to flash in Ms-DOS mode with orig BIOS using the "-f" attribute. I'm also not sure if you can flash with a bootable CD, as I only use floppy. Maybe someone else can confirm flashing with bootable CD. Good luck!
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NicolasG
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Re:Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2, and a bad BIOS flash? - 2008/03/04 10:51Lechuck wrote: I see you didn't correct the checksum, the original is 9300, the modified is 954E. On the lines where you changed the frequencies is still entered 1.00V. Maybe that's a problem too. I don't have enough experience with mobile BIOS to comment if you edited correct lines. You edited 4th and 13th line of PowerPlay bloc, the. 4th should be 3D, for 13th I don't know what's for. As far as I understand, it should not be the problem. But, well, I am too not experienced enough, so I may be wrong. Whatever 13th line is, it is frequencies for GPU and memory. I changed them to absolutely stable for my card values.
Lechuck wrote: I'd suggest to try to flash in Ms-DOS mode with orig BIOS using the "-f" attribute. I'm also not sure if you can flash with a bootable CD, as I only use floppy. Maybe someone else can confirm flashing with bootable CD. Good luck! And that is the problem. I tried to flash old BIOS under the Ms-DOS and Windows even before asking for help and I feel that process does not go properly. First time, to flash this bad BIOS I used ATIWinFlash v2.0.0.2 and the process went okay.Window appeared, that everything flashed and than it asked me to reload. I did and now have the result. And may be the BIOS it is not so bad, but ATIWinFlash was the problem, it did something wrong and now it does not want to flash the BIOS at all. I thought, may be I need some additional command line parameters or something. Or may be I need my notebook repaired. Thank you again.
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NicolasG
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Re:Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2, and a bad BIOS flash? - 2008/03/04 13:24Ho, I did it! I do not know, what it was. I was going to send my book to professionals, but decided to try to save it once more. I extracted boot image from my old Windows 98 CD, added ATIFlash and my old BIOS there, tried to flash it blind. And, voila, it works again. The BIOS is flashed, and my notebook again is as good as new. Thank you for the support.
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Lechuck
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Re:Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2, and a bad BIOS flash? - 2008/03/04 20:20Grear, I'm happy for you. I'd advise you that you read the main threads on BIOS modding on this forum, as there is written how to correct checksum etc... Also when you flash with ATIFlash and don't get all lines filled at the summary at the end of flashing it's better not to reboot and flash again with original BIOS.
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Mavke
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Re:Mobility Radeon HD 2600 512MB DDR2, and a bad BIOS flash? - 2008/03/05 21:59Thanks for the guideance, as I was a bit out yesterday and no time to check the forums. But I am very pleased with seeing it has been resolved. Just for reference the best operating system for a bootable media are old Ms-DOS 6.22 and Windows 98, and of course for ATI based cards using ATIFlash.
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Galaxy 9800GT PCIe 512MB - Rev 01
