Achilles17
12-05-04, 10:45 PM
Ok, so i decided to flash my BFG 6800 Ultra to the latest bios this weekend, as i figured it could really hurt (I had rev 2 before). Only problem is, I dont have a floppy. Well, being the ignorant idiot that I am, I look for a way to flash it in windows. Eventually I stumble upon WinFox, and find a way to flash cards with it that arent Leadtek cards. So I do that, but lo and behold, in the middle of flashing to the new bios, windows freezes. It eventually comes back to life, after I close winfox and some other programs in the task manager. Of course, I know that as soon as I reboot im not gonna have an image, as I dont have a bios on the card (couldnt reflash with winfox either, got an error when I tried). But I went ahead, attempting to blind flash. Sure enough, no image, and i had no idea what the layout of my bios was exactly, so for the moment i was ******.
So I go to bestbuy to get a PCI card, plop down a good $55 on an mx400, and put that in. The computer boots, I get an image, so finally some progress. I spend the next few hours trying how the hell I'm going to flash without a floppy, as my floppy is busted, the one in my dad's computer cant write, it can only read, and only the one on my mom's laptop, which isnt IDE of course, works. I tried everything to flash without a floppy involved in some way shape or form, but I couldnt figure it out. After trying to burn things to a CD, flash in the command prompt, etc, I eventually used the multiple floppies in my house to serve a purpose. I ended up creating a bootable disk on my moms, putting nvflash and the bios on that, taking my dads floppy out of his computer, and used that to give my cd-rw an image to emulate when creating a bootable CD.
So I boot up, flash it, everything goes well, take out my PCI card, put the monitor in the 6800 ultra, turn it on and....no picture. I was ready to jump out the window, and when i ran nvflash again after putting the PCI card back in, and it couldnt even SEE my ultra, I walked to the window and opened it. I decided to try to flash it one more time, so I let the computer have a breather, then booted it back up, started nvflash and suddenly it saw the card. I flashed it again, took out the PCI card, plugged the monitor in the ultra, and it finally worked :D :D :D :D
My plan origonally was to flash it to a modified, 1.5V bios (Im on water cooling now, so it shouldnt die on me within a month or so, right?), but after this whole fiasco, I'm afraid to flash anything ever again. Its not like flashing itself was hard, but too much weird **** went on, like nvflash not seeing the card. Thus I'm hesitant to flash it again unless absolutly necessary. I'm just relieved not to have a $500 paperweight, even though it cost me $55 and a weekend to save it from that fate.
So I go to bestbuy to get a PCI card, plop down a good $55 on an mx400, and put that in. The computer boots, I get an image, so finally some progress. I spend the next few hours trying how the hell I'm going to flash without a floppy, as my floppy is busted, the one in my dad's computer cant write, it can only read, and only the one on my mom's laptop, which isnt IDE of course, works. I tried everything to flash without a floppy involved in some way shape or form, but I couldnt figure it out. After trying to burn things to a CD, flash in the command prompt, etc, I eventually used the multiple floppies in my house to serve a purpose. I ended up creating a bootable disk on my moms, putting nvflash and the bios on that, taking my dads floppy out of his computer, and used that to give my cd-rw an image to emulate when creating a bootable CD.
So I boot up, flash it, everything goes well, take out my PCI card, put the monitor in the 6800 ultra, turn it on and....no picture. I was ready to jump out the window, and when i ran nvflash again after putting the PCI card back in, and it couldnt even SEE my ultra, I walked to the window and opened it. I decided to try to flash it one more time, so I let the computer have a breather, then booted it back up, started nvflash and suddenly it saw the card. I flashed it again, took out the PCI card, plugged the monitor in the ultra, and it finally worked :D :D :D :D
My plan origonally was to flash it to a modified, 1.5V bios (Im on water cooling now, so it shouldnt die on me within a month or so, right?), but after this whole fiasco, I'm afraid to flash anything ever again. Its not like flashing itself was hard, but too much weird **** went on, like nvflash not seeing the card. Thus I'm hesitant to flash it again unless absolutly necessary. I'm just relieved not to have a $500 paperweight, even though it cost me $55 and a weekend to save it from that fate.