Externally flashing non-working GTX280
 

OK, so I have this GTX280 I've bought 2nd hand 4 months ago. Worked with no issues until last week. One evening my PC did something weird, I have a 2 monitor setup and the image on one monitor froze, with the 2nd monitor and rest of the PC working fine. To avoid a reboot, I tried simply deactivating/reactivating the monitor to change display configuration and reset the GFX card. This worked so far.
10 minutes later, complete computer freeze, requiring a reboot. Some time later, freeze again, but this time the PC won't boot anymore.
Suspecting the graphics card due to the previous weirdness I borrow an old 7600 from a friend, swap the GTX280 for it, and bingo it works.

Now I had some time I just did a complete check, and definitely the PC won't boot when the GTX280 is in. The card's fan won't start at powerup, and go to full speed after about 15sec, but nothing else happens and the motherboard never does the startup beep. Or it starts at full speed straight away, depends. The green power supply OK LED on the card is lit.

So, it seems my 280 has somewhat suffered. I have EEPROM programming equipment, and thought I might have a chance trying to reflash the BIOS, so was wondering if some still had experience on newer cards with that kind of method that was common back in the days for converting PC cards to mac before the software flashing tools...

Re: Externally flashing non-working GTX280
 

This will be tough to diagnose on your own. Do you have any reason to believe that the bios chip is screwed? Do you have any reason to believe there is any physical damage?

Is your bios/flash chip removable? If not, I don't see how you're going to give it a reflash without some seriously careful soldering.
Otherwise, have you performed a visual inspection of the board for broken components, leaking capacitors, burned components or cold solder joints?

Re: Externally flashing non-working GTX280
 

Well, not really any more reason than any other problem, except maybe the weird fan behavior... but at least it's something I could rather easily tackle, unlike the rest, as...

Yes, I have inspected the card visually but didn't find any visible damage. Well it's rather hard to check EVERY connection as there are many hundreds of components, and a lot of BGA chips that hide their pins very well, but from what I can see there's no sign of local overheating or such, and the joints in the PSU area that's always under good stress all look good.

While I was at it I've also tried to boot with the card disassembled, and checked component temps without finding oddities. The GPU does heat up a little i.e at least receive some power.

Not meant to be removed, but the manufacturers still use the same good old 8-pin SOIC 24C series serial EEPROMS (24C16 on that card), so it's not hard at all to come and add programming wires or remove it if needed.

I think a key point in here is the complete PC lockup. I've had a little refresh on the matter, and from what I can see on tweakers' forums usually a bad flash leading to a corrupted GFX BIOS isn't even that bad, it's always possible to boot the PC with another working card to display the OS, and reflash the "dead" card that of course also sits in the PC. But not in my case, as whenever that card is inserted in a slot the PC won't boot at all, even with the other card in.

Re: Externally flashing non-working GTX280
 

Sounds like you know what you're doing my friend. Let us know how it turns out!