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Friend flashed an old GeForce 6800 with the wrong BIOS, what can I do?

S

sewer side

Junior Member
I let my friend borrow my mom's old nVidia GeForce 6800 (standard edition) and he tried to flash the BIOS with he GeForce GTO BIOS and apparently it didn't work and now when I turn on my computer, there's the POST beep but nothing ever shows up on the screen.

I have another computer with onboard video, I was curious if I could put that 6800 in the PCI-E slot in the other computer, use the onboard video, and still be able to flash the card to the original BIOS (which I've already found and downloaded). If that doesn't work, what are my other options on getting the correct BIOS back on this card? Any help is apppreciated. Thanks.
 
Generally, you need a PCI video card, set your BIOS to init the PCI video slot before the PEG/PCI-E, and then run the DOS flasher program. It should (hopefully) flash the 6800 card, not the PCI card.
 
So there's absolutely no way to use that onboard video to do it? I'll pick up a cheap PCI video card at the store if I have to, I just don't have any lying around anymore.

Seems like there might be some conflicts with trying to do the onboard/6800 flash thing, so I don't know if I should even attempt it. I'd much rather try something that doesn't involve running out and spending $10 on a PCI card if there's another way to do it, but if that's the only way, that's what I'll have to do. Thanks for the quick reply.
 
Well, generally installing a PCI-E video card into a mobo shuts off the onboard video. If you can figure out a way to keep it running, then yes, you could probably use that mobo. But my solution is pretty foolproof.
 
Well my motherboard's a bit weird, I can enable both the onboard sound and have a sound card in and working at the same time (both onboard sound and the sound card works), so I'm hoping it might be the same way with the video components. If not, I'll just get a PCI card and do it that way. Thanks again.
 
There is a warning message before you flash, please read it.

Things NOT to do.
a) Flash BIOS.
b) Flash BIOS without backup.
c) Reboot after errors during the flashing.

At this point, I will suggest you to haunt the person who killed your card until he gets you a 580 or equivalent card.

At this point your video card is as good as dead, so don't put any hope in it. If it, for whatever reason, comes back to life, consider you have won some form of lotteries. The problem is whether the video card can still be recognized by the OS. Boot with on board is okay as long as it boots, but that doesn't mean you can flash the problematic video card since you now have no idea if the flash was complete or not. The flash program should detect the presents of the video card. Otherwise, if nvflash no longer able to detect the existence of the card, then there is nothing you can do.

Flash program for Nvidia:
Nvflash
NiBitor - (IMO this is the last thing you will try before smacking the video card with a hammer.)

Guide of using Nvflash/NiBitor

WARNING!!!!Please read the whole guild first before attempting it, there is no turn around. For others who have perfectly fine card, do not follow the guide and start flashing bios. If you must, go to washroom and flush toilet instead.
 
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I don't think that the card is as good as dead, if all that happened was a bad flash, then you should be able to re-flash it. It doesn't have to be detected by the OS, as long as the PCI-IDs are still intact, the low-level DOS flasher programs should be able to map the ROM space and re-flash it. I think that he has a pretty good chance.

The only complication that I could see, is putting in an NV PCI card, and then using the NV flasher program, and not properly specifying the card to flash, such that it bad-flashes the PCI card. Then you'll be in a world of hurt.
 
Okay, here's the deal. I have the PCI-e card plugged into the computer with onboard video, I have the onboard video enabled as well as the PCI-e, so the computer does the usually three beeps (video card error) like normal. I have the floppy drive plugged in with the floppy with nvflash and the correct BIOS file on it, and I can tell that after the video error beeps, it tries to load what's on the floppy drive. I'm wondering if it's getting that far, if I can someone put in some commands while the monitor is black (since the PCI-2 card isn't working), and somehow be able to flash the card back without actually seeing what's happening on the screen? Does that make sense, or am I confused?

I was hoping I could just get to the point where it asks for "A:\" and I can type "nvflash -3 -4 -5 1.rom" and flash it that way, and hopefully it'll work. Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way, but the fact that the floppy drive is responding to commands makes me think that there's a possibility that I can do this. I just don't know which commands come up since I can't see the screen, is there anywhere that has some sort of pictures of how the BIOS looks when you're flashing using nvflash? As long as I know what
s on the sceen and when to press "y", I'm hoping that will work. Anyway, that's the only thing I can think of, hopefully my card isn't dead. Thanks for the replies, any more help is appreciated greatly..
 
Hollow - if you really want to go that way, just google "blind flash." Very possible, but there are other good suggestions in this thread that should be tried first if the resources are available.
 
This is exactly why I keep a trusty PCI S3 Virge around.
Hell, for that matter, I have a VESA and ISA Trident cards as well 😛
 
Sue your friend for an equivalent graphics card. In return they can keep the 6800. Why would they flash your card - that is completely rude to mess with hardware someone let you borrow in that way.

They owe you like a low low low end graphics card though. I think they can get a good deal on last gens worst graphics cards about 20-30 bucks after rebate.
 
Okay, first off, I'm going to be doing this from a USB floppy drive (I don't have a USB flash drive). Anyway, I created an autoexec.bat file with this command "A:\nvflash -3 -4 -5 1.rom", with 1.rom being my original backup rom. On the floppy disk itself, I have "1.ROM", "CWSDPMI.EXE", "NVFLASH.EXE", AND "AUTOEXEC.BAT". I have the boot-up device set up as the USB floppy.

Right now I have the onboard video disabled with just the PCI-e enabled (black screen but floppy drive still activates), I tried loading it up like this once with my floppy and the files on it, waited about three minutes, and press "y". I heard a beep noise, so I waited another three minutes. I tried to press "y" again and nothing happened, so I waited another few minutes and restarted. Still black screen, no luck, I guess it didn't flash the ROM.

Are there some other commands that I need to put in, or is there a chance that the floppy drive isn't even letting it boot into the DOS prompt? Considering I press "y" and it made a beeping noise, I figured that it had at least got into dos and started the nvflash program. Either way I'm stumped now and I really don't know what to do, and more help would be greatly appreciated.
 
@digitaldurandal

I should've mentioned it in my first post, but this graphics card was being used on my mothers computer for about 5 years, I 'snuck' it out of her computer and let a friend borrow it (would had a GeForce 2 MX) and he flashed the wrong BIOS on my card. This is far from the card that I'm using right now. Like I said, this was for my mother's computer that she usually uses for typing her stories.
 
Okay, after the floppy activates, about twenty seconds later I hear two quick beeps (not the same type of beeps that normally come from the motherboard posting or bad hardware. What do those beeps mean, and what am I supposed to do after that? I think I'm getting closer to getting the problem fixed, I'm just completely "in the dark" when it comes to what to type.

Okay, I tried it again, and there's a lot of floppy activity (maybe thirty seconds or so about 8 seconds after the 6800 beeps [I'm assuming it's going into DOS and loading the autoexec.bat, or at least I hipe that's what's it's doing]) but nothing ever seems to happen. The floppy activity stops, if I press "y" and then enter nothing happens, I've press some other keys (esc, alt, ctrl, etc. just to see what would happen) and nothing happens. I restarted the computer and the problem is still going on. I think there's something else that I need to do after the autoexec.bat file runs itself to confirm the flash, but since I can't see it, I don't know what I'm doing.

It seems like this problem has happened to quite a number of people, it surprises me that there's not more of an in-depth guide on how to do it. I've found a few of them, but each of them give different values to enter into autoexec.bat and I'm not sure which is the right one. Either way, I'll give this a go a few more times, I was just really not wanting to have to go and buy some cheap ass PCI just to get my mom's 6800 working again.
 
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A few thing that might help

When your motherboard starts up the chipset waits for a power good signal from the psu, then the cpu puts itself in a 'waiting to boot mode' where the bios begins to check if its code is corrupt. If the bios determines that its code is okay then it makes a call to a specific memory address that is supposed to contain the start of the video bios. The video bios does its code check ,loads and then returns control back to the motherboard bios. At that point is when you actually see something on the screen.

If the video bios is corrupt then control is not returned to the motherboard bios and booting will halt. The pc ends up waiting forever for the video bios to tell it that it is okay to boot.
Some motherboard bios will allow you to set pci as a default boot option and sometimes that will allow you to use a pci card to boot into dos and flash the pci express card, but not always. Some bios do not map the pci express memory space when the card isn't detected at boot making it unaccessible from dos.

The other options involve flashing the bios using an external flasher but that takes someone with the electronics skill to do it and not something worth learning for a 6800 card.

If it were me I would just buy a newer card. There are cards on ebay for $20 shipped better than the 6800.
 
HollowRopes said:
Okay, first off, I'm going to be doing this from a USB floppy drive (I don't have a USB flash drive). Anyway, I created an autoexec.bat file with this command "A:\nvflash -3 -4 -5 1.rom", with 1.rom being my original backup rom. On the floppy disk itself, I have "1.ROM", "CWSDPMI.EXE", "NVFLASH.EXE", AND "AUTOEXEC.BAT". I have the boot-up device set up as the USB floppy.
Click to expand...
You need to format the floppy as a DOS boot disk, which copies the DOS system files, IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, and COMMAND.COM. Without those, DOS can't boot.
 
VirtualLarry said:
The DOS flasher doesn't map the ROM using PCI config space?
Click to expand...

For PCI the address for the video bios is always at the same address hxC000.
That is why you can often boot a pc with a damaged motherboard using a PCI card.

For pci express that location is a lot more complicated because pci express isn't directly mapped to preset addresses but instead has a hub that is sent addresses by the cpu telling it which device it wants access to. That mapping varies with the board chipset and layout and only the motherboard bios knows what the proper configuration is. If the motherboard bios doesn't detect the pci express card then it isn't configured in the settings and nothing can find it because it was never given an address for anything running after the bios to be able to find it. When something like windows boots, it saves the information that the bios gives it and then unloads the bios and takes over.

There are ways to find out where the card is located but it isn't done in routine software because it risks harming other devices if the software chooses the wrong address. You can probe memory address until you find the start of the video bios then you need to know the flash chips command routines to put it into write mode and to send the new data.


I know quite a bit about the bios video boot process because I used to design cards that would intercept the bios call to the video bios and run code that took control of the host pc never returning control to the main bios. Worked great on pc and laptops that had bios passwords stored in firmware, not just battery backed up.
 
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Don't buy a "cheap" PCI card. Buy a "cheap" PCIe card from the fs/ft forums or something and be done with it.

For $35 I'll ship you an EVGA 6800 with a AC cooler on it. 🙂
 
Your best bet here is to borrow a PCI card from a friend so you can boot into DOS and flash the card. If you actually need to spend money on a PCI card, you might as well just replace the card.

And don't listen to tweakboy -- he's wrong here.
 
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