Card saved.

I went to the VGA museum and got the only bios available from creative, it's reference apparently so I guess that helped.

The card had an invalid ID or at least that's one of the info I got during the flashing.

That's wonderful that a BIOS flash saved it 😀 This'll probably happen with a bunch more cards over the next few years, where the card was equipped with an early flash-rom BIOS. I wonder if powering the card once every few years avoids this, or it's inevitable on everything with flash memory?

It's not like a Geforce 256 is that difficult to fix compared to most cards like a GF4 MX440 card (since they're mostly the same...), but it's great that it was just a BIOS issue and not a more complex one like failed RAM or damaged BGA connection.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-09-26, 00:14:

That's wonderful that a BIOS flash saved it 😀 This'll probably happen with a bunch more cards over the next few years, where the card was equipped with an early flash-rom BIOS.

Early does not mean anything in that situation. BIOS usually use NOR-flash chip, which is much more resilient than NAND.

I wonder if powering the card once every few years avoids this, or it's inevitable on everything with flash memory?

Just powering it will do absolutely nothing. You need to rewrite flash memory to renew it.

I'm pretty happy about it especially since I customized a zalman copper cooler specifically for the DDR, to keep it as cool as possible, the only thing is that my ddr is an Asus not a creative one, so there's that.

If anybody happens in this thread you are welcome to dump your gf ddr bios and post it, I wouldn't mind flashing the one specifically made for my card in the future.

Ok something weird happened, i start the PC today to test it and every game shows some form of texture\color corruption.

https://streamable.com/tyzqee

https://streamable.com/u1h5v4

https://streamable.com/6z8ow9

Any idea and what could be the cause?

Slight memory instability.

I imagined it, i was thinking if the bios i flashed could be the cause, what are my options? editing the bios to lower the RAM timing?

Upon further inspection I found a possible missing SMD component.

Another one too, both under the ram.

I solved it but the solution was ridiculous enough to warrant a poll

https://strawpoll.com/bVg8oedXMnY

Ridiculous? Eh, probably memory overclocked the memory. Also I don't see anything missing on the photos above.

Well we have a winner!
I guess the firmware had a slightly lower clocked memory than the one originally used by this card.

Instead of 301 I had to overclock it to 310, works like a charm in every game.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-10-18, 21:36:

Ridiculous? Eh, probably memory overclocked the memory. Also I don't see anything missing on the photos above.

The solder joints are flat and opaque in comparison to unused ones, I guess some SMD component was there at some point.

iraito wrote on 2023-10-18, 21:41:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-10-18, 21:36:

Ridiculous? Eh, probably memory overclocked the memory. Also I don't see anything missing on the photos above.

The solder joints are flat and opaque in comparison to unused ones, I guess some SMD component was there at some point.

Probably a 100nF 10V.
I voted for the weird interference... and lost.

Brainmarking this thread, got one I have to sort out sometime.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-19, 00:37:

Brainmarking this thread, got one I have to sort out sometime.

I just edited the bios of my gf to 310hz for the ram, so I can simply not care about coolbits etc.

If you have my same card and issue, tell me and I will send you the ROM file.

Mine is a reference design but by SGI I think.