Help identifying OEM video card

[mricks86]

I have a Dell OEM Geforce 256 video card that I cannot get to work under Win2k with the Nvidia Detonator drivers and I am wondering if there is any way to identify the actual manufacturer of this card using the serial numbers on it or in any other way? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Peter]

PCI and AGP cards are supposed to carry a PCI readable board ID (beside the chip ID), you can identify the manufacturer from there.

Find a PCI diagnostics tool that reads the "Subsystem ID" for you. That consists of a Vendor and Device ID, both 16-bit values.

Like if you have a device with

device vendor = 1002, chip = 5144
card vendor = 148C, card = 0221

you'd then use the vendor ID search engine on www.pcisig.com (the PCI manufacturers special interest group)

http://www.pcisig.com/membership/vid_search

to find out that you've got something with an ATi chip made by C.P. Technologies. Now search Google for C.P. and you find out that it's a PowerColor brand ... and if you can't guesstimate what you have from their website, you can mail their support to decode the card ID for you.


That's the PCI way - if there's an FCC ID on it, you might want to visit www.fcc.gov and use their search engine for a similar hint from the paperwork side of things.

regards, Peter

 

[Bozz]

Once again I'm impressed by your knowledge, Peter

How did you come to learn all of this info (and all the other good stuff you've posted before)??

Cheers

 

[Peter]

This is the Highly Technical forum, you're supposed to be impressed by the answers, or post
impressive answers

Seriously, the above is everyday business if you happen to be a BIOS engineer.

regards, Peter

 

[CTho9305]

<< This is the Highly Technical forum, you're supposed to be impressed by the answers, or post
impressive answers

Seriously, the above is everyday business if you happen to be a BIOS engineer.

regards, Peter >>



that explains your incredible answers to my bios questions

 

[mricks86]

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately I don't have a diagnostic tool that will read the Subsystem ID for me. And there also was no FCC ID number on the card. I did go to www.fcc.org anyway and typed in every number I could find on the card, just in case I'd get lucky, but none of them were valid FCC ID numbers)

There is a sticker on the back with a swirling oval logo and the italic all cap letters MIC inside the logo. Beside that logo is a list of 5 things that read:
1. VGA CARD (180-P0020-0100-E)
2. E-G012-01-1496(B)
3. Nvidia International, Inc.
4. 2001.05
5. Nvidia International, Inc./USA

I was unable to dig up anything on the web about MIC pertaining to video cards but maybe it means something to you. Anyway, thanks for your input, I really appreciate it!

 

[Peter]

Umm... no it doesn't. Reading the subsystem ID is fairly easy though.

Go here:

ftp://ftp.lsil.com/pub/symchips/scsi/drivers/Utilities

Download PCI.EXE, put it on a DOS boot disk, then boot to DOS and use it to look at the VGA card's register set. (Or save a dump to disk by pressing F5 on the main screen, and post the snippet from the VGA card here.)
If you're in Windows 9x or ME, you can start it directly from Windows.

The _chip_ vendor and device ID are at register offsets 00h..03h, the _subsystem_ (read: card) vendor and device ID are at offsets 2Ch..2Fh.

regards, Peter

 

[mricks86]

Thanks Peter,
I'll give that a try today and I'll post the figures here when I get them. I really appreciate your input, you've been a great help.

 

[ThisIsMatt]

What is the POST info on the card?

 

[jrini]

There is a Windows program named PCITree that might help. This program is free from the "http://pcitree.de" web site.

 

[mricks86]

Thanks for the continued help, to answer one of the questions above (about what it does during POST), this card doesn't show any info during POST. My last card (Leadtek Winfast S320II TNT2 Pro) would identify itself on the first screen upon powering up my computer, but from this card I get nothing.

I did use the PCI Tree program (thanks for the link!) and here's the info I got.

VID: x10DE Nvidia Corporation
DID: x0150 NV15 Geforce2 GTS/Pro
subVID: x10DE Nvidia
subID: x002E
rev. xA4

Any of this mean anything to you guys? Once again, thanks for helping and LMK if this info sheds any light on this card.

 

[mricks86]

Here's the video info I got when I used the "pci.exe" program.

PCI Registers for Bus[01], Dev[00], Func[0]
Vendor: Nvidia Corporation Device: 0150h
Class: VGA Graphics
x (low nibble of Register Offset)
x : 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0x: DE 10 50 01 07 00 B0 02 A4 00 00 03 00 20 00 00
1x: 00 00 00 D8 08 00 00 D0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
2x: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 DE 10 2E 00
3x: 00 00 00 00 60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0A 01 05 01
4x: DE 10 2E 00 02 00 20 00 17 00 00 1F 02 01 00 1F
5x: 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 CE D6 23 00 0F 00 00 00
6x: 01 44 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
7x: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
8x: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
9x: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Ax: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Bx: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Cx: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Dx: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Ex: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Fx: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

Vendor: 10DE Revision: A4h
Device: 0150 Class: Video Multimedia
Sub-Class: VGA Graphics Prog Int: 00h

Once again, if any of this means anything to you guys (gals too) I would appreciate the insight.

 

[Peter]

Well great.

This is an NVidia "0150" chip (GeForce 2 GTS as identified by the other program), on an NVidia "002E" card. Now since NVidia don't make cards themselves other than reference samples, this means that whoever made that card didn't bother setting their manufacturer ID. Out of luck I guess.

Unless that card has a design flaw or is individually broken, it should work OK with the reference drivers from NVidia anyhow ...

regards, Peter

 

[mricks86]

Thanks for all the help Peter. I'm going to give it another try on a different machine and see what I can come up with. If anything good came out of this, I was told this was a Geforce256 card, so maybe I've got a nicer card (if I can get it to work!) than I thought I had. I appreciate all your (and everyone else's) input.