Geforce 4 Ti4400 Bios question

[Toss3]

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to ask if it is possible to make a BIOS for the ti4400 that would only use 112mb of it's memory; one of the rams fell off(don't ask how) ?

I still get a picture with it but I see alot of squares that are different colors etc. but I think that if u'd disable the 16mb, that isn't there, u could actually make it work properly!

Thanks in advance,
Toss3!

[Blakhart]

My guess is you can't command what memory address to use, and you'll never know what range was lost by the missing chip anyway.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by Blakhart

My guess is you can't command what memory address to use, and you'll never know what range was lost by the missing chip anyway.

But I'll try flashing it to a ti4200 and see what happens... it's already broken so I won't loose anything!

[Blakhart]

I would be more interested in getting the mem chip soldered back.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by Blakhart

I would be more interested in getting the mem chip soldered back.

Is that even possible?

[Blakhart]

Since I would consider the card to be a paperweight untill it is repaired, I would call a electronics repair shop and see if they have any tricks to solder a bga memory chip onto a board. Reason I say bga is because my ti4400 has bga ram, and all 4400s I have seen do so as well. If it's not a bga chip, you should be able to do it yourself or have another do so if you're not comfortable with the thought. The bga chips have ball connections on the bottom surface of the chip, tsop chips have leads coming from both sides of the chip like most others. Bga is therefore more complicated to field repair.

If not, then try the 64m bios and let me know how goes it. I love to see stuff fixed like this, I recently soldered some chip caps back onto some ram I was given that had the chips knocked off. So here's me with two sticks of ecc mem that work great and cost 0.

[msxyz]

Well, I don't think it's possible. If your videocard has 8 mem chips try to use a bios for a 64Mb card and pray that the chip that fell wasn't used for the first 64 megs.

The GeForce 4 has a 4 x 32 bit DDR bus architecture. If your card uses BGA memory modules then chances are that it uses eight 8M32 chips; it might theoretically work with only 4 of them. Well, it might. In your place I would try to find a cheap 6600 AGP board

[Toss3]

Well, I'll try installing the BIOS(at least I don't have to do a blind flash, if anything goes wrong...) and tell you how it goes! BTW. I don't recall seeing anything "ball"-looking on the memory that fell off

[Blakhart]

Here are some pics of tsop and bga mem:

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=1990&p=2

The tsop has leads visible from the top of the chip whereas bga has its leads hidden underneath, and they're tiny balls, more or less.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by Blakhart

Here are some pics of tsop and bga mem:

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=1990&p=2

The tsop has leads visible from the top of the chip whereas bga has its leads hidden underneath, and they're tiny balls, more or less.

Then it's definatly BGA So how could I put the ram part back myself? Any tips?

EDIT: Tried using duck-tape and taping the ram part on: no success... tried flashing: no success (windows still says it's a ti4400 )

Any ideas?

[Blakhart]

Right off, I would try to see if there are any electronics repair shops around. Call them and ask if they can do the job, or would at least look at it. My guess is it'll take a reflow soldering job, as in the card is bathed in molten solder with the chip attached. Oh if the chip is missing any of the bga connectors, forget it.

Did you say the bios didn't take? So what if it says 4400, what does it say about the memory total?

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by Blakhart

Right off, I would try to see if there are any electronics repair shops around. Call them and ask if they can do the job, or would at least look at it. My guess is it'll take a reflow soldering job, as in the card is bathed in molten solder with the chip attached. Oh if the chip is missing any of the bga connectors, forget it.

Did you say the bios didn't take? So what if it says 4400, what does it say about the memory total?

It still said 128mb but I tried flashing it with a newer bios but that didn't help either... And some of the bga connectors are missing but are still attached to the card so maybe I should just accept that it's paperweight...