a friend of mine wants to use the bios i have on this oak card because he likes the color boot screen
now the problem is the chips are custom so i cant read them via a reader .we tried .
is there somekind of dos program to grab the bios from the card ?
scroeffie wrote on 2025-06-29, 08:50:now the problem is the chips are custom so i cant read them via a reader .we tried .
is there somekind of dos program to grab the bios from the card ?
NSSI can do that. Problem is it will dump the data as the PC sees it, not as it is in the chips. The chips seem to be split ODD/EVEN but you can't be sure, I've seen other mappings too.
You should be able to read them just like any other ROMs/EPROMs. Just select 27(C)256 as a chip type and ignore the ID. Then inspect the data to make sure you picked correct size and trim the file if neccesary, or redump as 27512 (shouldn't be needed).
Deunan wrote on 2025-06-29, 09:15:scroeffie wrote on 2025-06-29, 08:50:now the problem is the chips are custom so i cant read them via a reader .we tried .
is there somekind of dos program to grab the bios from the card ?NSSI can do that. Problem is it will dump the data as the PC sees it, not as it is in the chips. The chips seem to be split ODD/EVEN but you can't be sure, I've seen other mappings too.
You should be able to read them just like any other ROMs/EPROMs. Just select 27(C)256 as a chip type and ignore the ID. Then inspect the data to make sure you picked correct size and trim the file if neccesary, or redump as 27512 (shouldn't be needed).
we tried to read the chips but they have a custom pinout we are 99% shure thanks for the tip on the dos program
when i tried to read the chip always gives me pin error
See if three is an option to ignore the pin error, or disable it completly. These chips might not have standard CMOS I/O pins, so there won't be protection diodes to detect the pins by the programmer. But it doesn't mean it won't work.
There are mask ROMs that have somewhat different pinout but it's usually 1 or 2 pins, swapped around or different function. Even assuming that, and no suitable adapter on hand, one or two pins can be worked around by bending them upwards and connecting wires to the socket. I did that a few times.
not shure i want to risk my card 😀 if i mess something up the card is useless,wil think about it
scroeffie wrote on 2025-06-29, 16:06:not shure i want to risk my card 😀 if i mess something up the card is useless,wil think about it
I'd say you can read it just fine, since the pins that are showing as error are the programming voltage pin(1) and the programming mode pin (27).
edit: I wouldn't be surprised if the chips you have on the card are actually not reprogrammable.
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https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/oak-vga-0a37k#bios - don't know if this would be the colour BIOS
scroeffie wrote on 2025-06-29, 16:06:not shure i want to risk my card 😀 if i mess something up the card is useless,wil think about it
I think it'll be fine. These pins on older EPROMs (it might be OTP EPROM or mask ROM even) can have such issues. But start with NSSI, or other software, and do a read to a file. Once it's confirmed that the file is good you can then think about the programmer read again.
BTW, disable any video ROM shadow in BIOS before doing the read. Just in case, some shadows are not write protected by chipset and bugs in the ROM code can lead to self-modification and bad image.