Major problem flashing X800GTO bios!

[Squeakygoose]

I have a Sapphire X800GTO and tried to unlock the extra pipes this afternoon.

-I modded the bios myself by changing the 0000070, A value from 61 to 60.
-booted from a cdrom to dos
-used atiflash -f -p 0 16pipe.bin to flash the bios
- on reboot my PC won't post with the verbal warning "System failed VGA test" (It's an ASUS p4p800 deluxe)

I have a backup of my original bios but I can't boot to reflash it!

Please help, I'll never mess with bios's eve again, I promise!

 

[Squeakygoose]

so even if I boot from a PCI card I can still flash the AGP card? Has this been done before?

 

[jelly1228]

pull your agp / pci-e card out. put your pci in and boot. Go into you bios and set you pci card as master display. Reboot, at post turn you computer off. Put you agp / pci-e card back in. Reflash you bios on your card! It sould work fine. I had a problem like that when I flashed my x800. I work just fine after I did that. Good luck!

 

[Squeakygoose]

Phew! Got a PCI video card from an old server at work. Followed your instructions and was able to reflash to my original bios.

Thanks Prozac and Jelly!

So, why would I be unable to unlock those pipes? Showed all f's in ATI tool...

 

[bluntside]

-Note- Ive read certain articles that, only the vivo supprted ati cards are capable of doing the mod bios flash.
Other than that, thats as quik as it'l get for ya.
Unless you purchase an x850 pro w/ vivo support and do a mod Bios flash. to a x850 XT PE speedster

 

[Datman]

Did you read the guides from the TechPowerUp website?

 

[jelly1228]

You will find all that you need to know here! http://www.techpowerup.com/

 

[Squeakygoose]

Well, I figured I'd give it another shot while I had the PCI card for recovery.

Flashed it with the X800XL (AGP) bios from the techpowerup website. Booted fine and unlocked the extra pipes! So I don't know what went wrong in the first place. the only thing I did different was to add the -newbios flag using atiflash:

atiflash -newbios -f -p 0 16pipe.bin

Anyways, I'm all happy now that I have all my pipes open (allways good to clean the pipes... ) I was able to o/c it to 450/549 stable as well so that puts it somewhere between a stock X800XL and X800XT I believe.

Thanks again for your help

 

[fainis]

rellax my friend......use another video card......on pci ..isa ..whatever ..and boot with that one ...before that ...reset the sistem bios......

you need init video ..to be pci...

 

[Scougs]

I'm glad you got you situation figured out. I have helped two other guys unlock the Sapphire AGP X800GTO with the R430 core and I have unlocked my own. One of the guys that I helped had something similar happen. I think that sometimes the bios just doesn't get flashed properly. It could also be that there was an error when you saved the modded bios. I suspect that if you tried to flash it again with the modded bios it would work fine.

 

[Squeakygoose]

Probobly, but I've taken the PCI card back to the office so I'll stay with what I've got...

Is there any difference between using a modded (61 -> 60) X800GTO bios and a X800XL bios?

 

[Scougs]

In terms of function, I think both bios' are the same. I used an XL bios until I found out how to mod the original bios. Then I modded a copy of my backup and reflashed. I didn't notice any performance difference. The only thing different is what type of card the drivers and windows detected. It now says X800GTO again.