im trying to figure out what PCI video card i can use in this build
i have a ATI mach64 PCI but it is damaged and needs to be repaired

do u think it would be possible to flash a Macintosh OEM ATI Rage PCI that came with a b+w G3 to work in this pentium board GA586VX rev 3.36?
the only other cards i have are both mac, radeon 9200LE and a radeon 7000 pci (which i cant find at the moment)
i also have one other red Radeon card (9200?) that is a powercolor card that freezes certain mobos i put it in.. based on pci spec 2.0 vs 2.1 vs 2.2? i think??

will any of these work in a an early pentium in windows 3.11 or win95?

chrisNova777 wrote:

do u think it would be possible to flash a Macintosh OEM ATI Rage PCI that came with a b+w G3 to work in this pentium board GA586VX rev 3.36?
the only other cards i have are both mac, radeon 9200LE and a radeon 7000 pci (which i cant find at the moment)
i also have one other red Radeon card (9200?) that is a powercolor card that freezes certain mobos i put it in.. based on pci spec 2.0 vs 2.1 vs 2.2? i think??

I haven't tried this myself, but I imagine it should be possible to flash a Mac video card to work on a PC. If the video card has a removable BIOS chip and you have an EEPROM programmer, it should be pretty easy to flash. I haven't tried to flash a Mac card on a PC, but it might be possible as long as you use a spare video card (preferably a different brand than the Mac card) to guide through the process so you know what you're doing. The Mac Elite website has some useful information when it comes to BIOS flashing those video cards.

chrisNova777 wrote:

will any of these work in a an early pentium in windows 3.11 or win95?

Depending on the model of the ATI Rage video card, it might work on Windows 3.11, IIRC the Rage XL was the last video card to support Windows 3.1x, if it turns out to be a Rage 128, you can probably get away with some generic VESA driver. As for Windows 95, the ATI Rage video card should have driver support for it, but because AMD has hidden all but the latest available drivers for their video cards, you may have to look elsewhere for Windows 95 drivers. Don't get your hopes up on getting drivers for the Radeons because AFAIK ATI/AMD has never released Windows 3.1x nor 95 drivers for the Radeon video cards, Windows 98 was the minimum supported OS for those.

Finally got this machine put together !!!! After successfully flashing the Radeon pci card
just experimenting with the iwill SIDE-RAID 66 pci card. ive got 2 WD IDE 250gb drives connected
and set up as a mirror drive of 128gb size

i was going to do a stripe but it complained that they were both on the same IDE cable so i just made a mirror because im lazy
and i think mirrors still benefit from extra read speed dont they? + protection against fault.. so win-win.

if the GA586VX board is from 1995/1996 im guessing its got alot to benefit from running two drives at UDMA 4 (66MB/s)
i had a CompactFlash attached to the mainboard itself via adapter, but i think it was in PIO mode which i looked up and
i read it was probably only at 16MB/s .. maybe its just a crap CF card that i have. not all of them are UDMA capable? correct?

anyone had any good reviews to share about using IDE RAID pci cards with win9x?
iwill side raid 66 : http://www.oldschooldaw.com/forums/index.php/topic,1111

586 with 128GB? crazy or Win95 on a Raid, these are things I didn't think I'd ever see.
In theory a mirror should actually be a performance hit as it has to write to both disks, I doubt you will notice anything in the real world though and any slight hit you do loose will be made up with coolness/bragging rights.

well now my computer is screwed thanks to retroweb posting the wrong bios on their page https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/gigaby … e-ga-586vx#bios

i fucked up and let it flash it when it gave a warning saying hte part number didnt match
now im screwed and i cant even flash it back - nothing works right
it cant detect my hard drives right anymore.. and when i boot off a floppy it doesnt let me switch floppies or else when i type dir it shows the stuff from the first bootup floppy still. it wont read a new disk.. and the flash utility doesnt run properly
i seriously just bricked my vintage pentium 75mhz because of this fucking retroweb site posting incorrect shit
im so dissappointed ;(

07/11/97-i430VX-8669-2A59GG0CC-00 Latest BIOS

^^^ this bios just fucked up my system totally as u can see it says 8669 not 8663 like the rest of the bioses posted
its not the right bios..
im really upset i put so much time + effort into this and now its totally ruined for no reason

That's annoying.. Does the board by any chance have a bios recovery function?

i htought i had it fixed.. edited autoexec.bat and ptu the command to flash automatically but then it screwed up when it flashed it appeared to be flashing properly.. using the original bios that was saved before i did the first flash... and then it hangs at the last block and i reset the machine because it was hung and now it doesnt do a goddamn thing.. no bios.. nothing.. can i replace the chip or program the chip with an eeprom programmer?
wtf do i do now

can i take a bios chip from a similar time-period board and plug it in ?

chrisNova777 wrote on 2025-01-20, 15:35:

i htought i had it fixed.. edited autoexec.bat and ptu the command to flash automatically but then it screwed up when it flashed it appeared to be flashing properly.. using the original bios that was saved before i did the first flash... and then it hangs at the last block and i reset the machine because it was hung and now it doesnt do a goddamn thing.. no bios.. nothing.. can i replace the chip or program the chip with an eeprom programmer?
wtf do i do now

Not really down to the Retroweb though - they simply rehost the BIOS files available fron Gigabyte, and according to old posts from them the part mismatch error is normal and if youI ignore the message and proceed with the flash it should work OK.

it screwed my board bigtime the 2.9 bios version... i really regret even trying to flash it now i feel so fuckin dumb... let me go bbash my face into a brick wall

Hello chrisNova777,

I understand you are frustrated at the moment, but this is absolutely no reason to rant against the wonderful people who maintain TheRetroWeb in their spare time.

A bad flash happened to all of us and is just part of the retro computing experience.

Your GA-586VX board has the BIOS chip nicely in a socket, so it can easily be reprogrammed in an (E)EPROM programmer. If you don’t have one, now is the time to invest in one. My programmer of choice is the Xgecu T48.
Alternately you can perform a Hot-flash recovery. There is plenty of information about this trick here on Vogons.

Good luck with the BIOS recovery.
Jan

i just tried to take a bios chip off another board and it dropped and it broke one of the pins
not my day i give up

if theres anyone out there that has the capabilities of rescuing me from this nightmare...
it appears im in need of a bios chip flashed by someone who owns a programmer who can stick the right bios on the chip for me
i feel awful - i didnt even have to flash the bios i only did so because i saw that it was a really early revision and that it had never been updated...
i wish i had of picked a different bios to flash.... i almost had it fixed and i rebooted thinking it had hung... and now it wont even do anything.. no post.. no video.. no nothing when i turn it on
my board is completely dead and i feel like a total moron. in my defense i had someone bugging me while i was trying to work on this, if anyone reading this knows how to fix it please send me a msg i need help i cant fix this on my own... and i cant afford to replace the whole board either

chrisNova777 wrote on 2025-01-20, 17:52:

if theres anyone out there that has the capabilities of rescuing me from this nightmare... it appears im in need of a bios chip […]
Show full quote

if theres anyone out there that has the capabilities of rescuing me from this nightmare...
it appears im in need of a bios chip flashed by someone who owns a programmer who can stick the right bios on the chip for me
i feel awful - i didnt even have to flash the bios i only did so because i saw that it was a really early revision and that it had never been updated...
i wish i had of picked a different bios to flash.... i almost had it fixed and i rebooted thinking it had hung... and now it wont even do anything.. no post.. no video.. no nothing when i turn it on
my board is completely dead and i feel like a total moron. in my defense i had someone bugging me while i was trying to work on this, if anyone reading this knows how to fix it please send me a msg i need help i cant fix this on my own... and i cant afford to replace the whole board either

I'm not sure where you at. But for the cost of shipping ($8-$15 depending on just the programmer or bundle that handles more), you can get an CH341A programmer off Amazon and fix it yourself. You'll also have a programmer on hand if you ever run into needing one again.

ya i have enough other roles + duties to worry about without putting on a new hat.. i had a chip programmer when i was like 10 but its not something i want to mess with really. id much rather pay someone to write my bios on a chip and send it to me. anyone?

anyone able to point me at a business that can create me a new bios chip that will work with my Gigabyte GA-586VX

i dont have a programmer.. im not able to do this for myself.. i mean i. ccould but i have other goals in life and other responsibilities
i just need a working bios chip. can anyone help me solve this?