You're in luck - I have one of those that I've been procrastinating selling on Ebay! Suggestion on a flash program to use to save the BIOS?

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-06-09, 19:31:

You're in luck - I have one of those that I've been procrastinating selling on Ebay! Suggestion on a flash program to use to save the BIOS?

NVFlash, nVidia's own flash tool. From my own experience in messing with NV34 cards use something from the 4.xx branch.

Do you have a link? The only versions I'm finding are very recent, and Google has become heavily biased against anything more than a few years old.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-06-09, 19:31:

You're in luck - I have one of those that I've been procrastinating selling on Ebay! Suggestion on a flash program to use to save the BIOS?

Hallo and thank you for your offer! I would say the best is to use the nvflash in dos (freedos) environment. This is what I am using.
It should be like that: nvflash --save filename.rom
--
I can post here the nvflash I use.
Thank you!

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-06-09, 21:28:

Do you have a link? The only versions I'm finding are very recent, and Google has become heavily biased against anything more than a few years old.

I gonna provide the right nvflash here in an hour. I had the exact same problem. The old Internet is falling apart. It is hard to get the old stuff. Same as this bios. 😢😢

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-06-09, 19:31:

You're in luck - I have one of those that I've been procrastinating selling on Ebay! Suggestion on a flash program to use to save the BIOS?

Here is the right , tested and virus free 😀 NVFLASH
The command to backup the bios should be like "drive letter:\nvflash -- save name.rom"
I am using an USB pen drive with FreeDos but other DOS environments should do just fine too.

Thank you.

The mission seems to have been a success. I named it asus.rom when I saved it, and the file size is 62 kb. I have very little experience with flashing video card BIOS files, so I'll assume that's about the correct size.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-06-10, 16:29:

The mission seems to have been a success. I named it asus.rom when I saved it, and the file size is 62 kb. I have very little experience with flashing video card BIOS files, so I'll assume that's about the correct size.

Thank you very much! It looks as a correct file!

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-06-10, 16:29:

The mission seems to have been a success. I named it asus.rom when I saved it, and the file size is 62 kb. I have very little experience with flashing video card BIOS files, so I'll assume that's about the correct size.

Thank you. The file is correct. I have acquired 2 different versions of this ASUS bios. Yours and one from a local guy in one of our communuties. However the card has some hardware issue. Neither of the good bioses work. The monitor is triggered and it has "signal" but the screen stays black. With a bios from a very different FX5600 I have it shows distorted image and green lines - it looks like some of the memory chips is very dead (?) Anyway, thank you very much. I will share the bios on TheRetroWeb. It might help other guys. I can use a shotgun approach and try to replace the memory with the chips from a donor. And reflowing the GPU is my last resort...

This is the garbage I see when the card has the bios from a different 256Mb version of FX5600 card. It looks to me as a very dead video ram (?) This is the only way I get any image. I have also tried one random bios from the VGAmuseum and it seems to be a downclocked 500Mhz RAM bios from a different FX5600. With this I see the correct vga bios identification, not scrambled rubish! but a black screen right after.
My assumtion is that different bioses handle the vram differently thus once I see nothing and once a rubbish. No image on the screen once the original bios is in place.