First post, by 386SX
Hello,
I got a brand new Rage XL PCI those ones are built nowdays classic simple PCB layout with 8MB SDRAM 32bit Samsung 60ns without any mark on the PCB and a late Rage XL chip early 2004. I understand that these may not work on very old mainboard for the voltage problem but I was expecting at least it might work on newer ones and instead while the card is indeed arrived built new with its few components, it doesn't boot on any mainboards (Socket AM2, Socket 775, Atom mini itx and even a i440BX) and the monitor doesn't get any signal. The system is on, video chip warm up, I'm wondering what it can be, maybe something is wrong with the SST bios loaded, did anyone try to flash these?
I don't have the patience to send back so far such cheap card I wonder if they even try it before shipping it.
Update: I tried with a post PCI debug card and this vga on the i440BX board having both 3,3v and 5v signal (the mainboard works with last modern USB2.0 3,3-5v PCI cards) the code where it stops (Award bios) is "4E", the 3,3v and 5v test board led are on. Reading the debug manual it says "Reboot mode under manufacturing mode. Otherwise display messages and enter setup".
Update2: I tried the old atiflash msdos tool to see if it can be detected using an AGP card as first boot and I'm lucky this time at least with the main AGP card it can let me into MSDOS and detected as ASIC ID 4752 Rage XL/XC, the flash rom is a SST39SF010 the rom size reported as 0x20000 (?).
Online I was reading about a similar old Dell Rage XL bios P/N 113-72301-101 early 2001 RAGE SDRAM BIOS also I was watching one of the the original card PCB layout ( https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/rage-xl-pci.c3167 ) that seems like a different P/N EDIT: but I suppose these were all oem cards (?). Anyway these usual cheap redesigned XL cards seems like a cost reduced version of that version without the second mosfet and with less components. I think I need to find more possible bios images to try flash on this card. Booting into Win ME with the AGP Riva 128 card as main vga, it seems like even detecting the Rage XL PCI and it even install the driver but with an AGP card as main one it crash on second boot of course with two vga I suppose it's not the best Win ME scenario but this was expected.
Thanks,
Bye