This one works best, bought rage XL with complex board on purpose and this one worked.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-05-02, 17:54:

This one works best, bought rage XL with complex board on purpose and this one worked.

Cheers,

I wish I had bought that but I knew it was the modern cheap revision. I suppose that one works better for sure considering how many more components are installed but I was wondering if the card that arrived to me (the usual PCB seen on ebay and any modern stores) has a bios problem or manufacturing problem. So flashing the bios seems like a good (and only) idea.

You can try this https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ati-flashrom/
I've used it with my two Chinese Rage XL cards and it worked well, the two cards have the same BIOS but one is from 2019 and the other one is from 2021.
In this page you can download an original RageXL PCI BIOS http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item/108-ati-rage-xl
But it didn't work with my cards so it isn't relevant.

Hoping wrote on 2022-05-02, 18:16:

You can try this https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ati-flashrom/ I've used it with my two Chinese Rage XL cards and it worked […]
Show full quote

You can try this https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ati-flashrom/
I've used it with my two Chinese Rage XL cards and it worked well, the two cards have the same BIOS but one is from 2019 and the other one is from 2021.
In this page you can download an original RageXL PCI BIOS http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item/108-ati-rage-xl
But it didn't work with my cards so it isn't relevant.

Interesting did you compare the bios to check maybe where they differ in versions numbers/ID/size? Anyway are these modern bios somewhere beside the original one? Cause I think my card has the old original early 2001 bios and I wonder if considering your experience it might be the reason it doesn't boot (maybe they just installed the eeprom with the original loaded data and not customized for the simplified PCI layout). 😉

Maybe it's just broken? One of the cost-reduced ATI Rage XL PCI's I purchased had a tiny bit of physical damage that severed one of the connections to the BIOS chip. Like yours it would get hot but not display anything. I managed to fix the severed connection with a bit of solder.

Have you tried it in a working system as a secondary video card to see if windows sees the card or if it outputs anything as a secondary video card?

If you want to try the BIOS from my cards you can get the on my post. (Chinese Rage XL PCI mods, improved compatibility and looking for a good overclock.)

Some update (thanks for the link I'll try soon): I used both atiflash and flashrom tools and it seems like the original bios we talked above (that simply is a month newer version of a later a bit different P/N but supposed to be similar I imagine who knows the specific layouts/sdram memory these bios were oriented to) seems that get flashed (but in flashrom it need to be forced with the option, cause it detects something is different with memory of that bios and anyway a code error everytime, I wonder the type of config of the SDRAM module maybe?) but after the boot same thing, still NO signal but it goes after the "4E" code to "FF" and boot into Win ME (... without video card starting.. this i440BX board is incredible 😁) so the original 2001 xl pci bios just like said before cannot work too on my specific card.
But as secondary card (before the reboot installation step) it get detected by the o.s. and even install the driver by itself along with the main functional Riva 128 AGP that I need to have a vga output to work with.

I don't think it might be a damaged trace cause I would expect to not even detect the card or flash the eeprom. I would imagine a not well soldered BGA chip but I still want to think It might simply be that the original eeprom was probably on some onboard oem computer and cannot maybe just work into this design without some customization (just a theory). That would explain why that might exist newer bios versions I want to try.

Update: tried both two new bios but they didn't work too.. 🙁.. I think they are mostly the same beside the file date. But the @Hoping Rage XL card has a 2006 quite late chip with different SDRAM brand. I think each bios depending on the components might be customized beside which one. I hope this doesn't mean my card might be really broken if three bios can't work. I try to understand if maybe there's something more to try.
Also it seems that some modern Rage XL cards (at least the one I got who knows how many different combinations exists) use a 36Kb bios file instead of the original 32Kb. I think the chip supported different eeprom size 32/36/64Kbyte.. models while maybe the rest of the memory was empty.