It was a nice video to watch. Nicely done, excellent card, totally worth to save 😀

BitsUndBolts wrote on 2022-11-21, 07:27:

This is my first post and I want to share a few details regarding this ELSA Synergy II -32 PCI.

I watched your video yesterday while sitting on the toilet. Driver 2.08 is what you want with a TNT2...

TNT2 AGP is about equivalent to a Voodoo3...

BitsUndBolts wrote on 2022-11-21, 07:27:

Hi everyone, […]
Show full quote

Hi everyone,

This is my first post and I want to share a few details regarding this ELSA Synergy II -32 PCI.
ElsaSynergy.jpg

Specs:
Bus: PCI
Chipset: nVidia Riva TNT2
Memory: 32MB SGRAM
Core Clock: 125 MHz
Memory Clock: 150 MHz
Memory Bus Width: 128 bit

Symptoms:
When the card was plugged in a PCI slot on an ASUS P3B-F, the system would boot without issues (no concerning beep codes), but there was no VGA output. The chip on the card got warm while booting.

Evaluation:
Since this card was meant for the professional segment, I suspected maybe a modified BIOS that locks this card to specific hardware (e.g. DELL, HP, etc.). Therefore, I tried to flash the BIOS of this card.

Resolution:
I added a second graphics card to the board to be able to boot and get a VGA output.
Then I tried several flashing utilities:

Elsa's own FlashRom (contains all BIOS images): Elsa FlashRom utility
Complained that the BIOS on the card is faulty. Could not read or write BIOS.

nVidia nvFlash:
Wouldn't work in DOS. I did not spend a lot of time with this tool.

Leadtek wfflash: Leadtek wfflash utility
Worked like a charm. Could read and write the BIOS. This tool rescued the card!

From what I can tell, the BIOS on the card differs in 4 bits only from the working BIOS image.
Seems like the BIOS chip flipped those bits over time (age or external influence) => Bit Rot?

The card is working now again:
5 - splash.jpg

I spent quite some time to track down BIOS images and flashing tools. I am sharing them here for others to use!
I will also attach the broken BIOS image file (password: brokenBios) in case you want to compare it with the working BIOS image.

BROKEN BIOS (use at your own risk! Password: brokenBios): Broken BIOS

If you want a longer version of the story, I have a YouTube Channel that has the entire process documented in one video:
ELSA Synergy II-32: This is how I fixed this graphics card!

Edit: Update URLs to have text

Hi, I read your post and I want to thank you for sharing your experience with the whole forum.
I will secure the tools you used and what you described in the post, so that in the future, if I need them for my card, I can easily recover everything.
Thanks again 😄

also watched the video, yt recommended it
very nice, thanks for sharing !

Great work fixing the card! I have a PNY Geforce2MX200 32MB PCI that has a corrupt BIOS too. No idea where I would find a BIOS image for it though.

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-02-22, 02:25:

Great work fixing the card! I have a PNY Geforce2MX200 32MB PCI that has a corrupt BIOS too. No idea where I would find a BIOS image for it though.

Can you post some pictures of your card? I have a PNY MX200 PCI card that I've had for over 20 years. When I was in high school a classmate in one of my computer classes gave it to me because it was "dead". When he gave it to me it had what looked like an entire tube of Arctic Silver gushing out from under the heatsink and it was all over the PCB. I know that most reports say that Arctic Silver isn't conductive and is only minimally capacitive, but... that card was totally dead until I cleaned all that paste off. Then it worked fine for years.

Anyway! Post some pics of your card. If it's the same as mine I can see if mine still works and try to upload the BIOS for you.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-22, 18:29:

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-02-22, 02:25:

Great work fixing the card! I have a PNY Geforce2MX200 32MB PCI that has a corrupt BIOS too. No idea where I would find a BIOS image for it though.

Can you post some pictures of your card? I have a PNY MX200 PCI card that I've had for over 20 years. When I was in high school a classmate in one of my computer classes gave it to me because it was "dead". When he gave it to me it had what looked like an entire tube of Arctic Silver gushing out from under the heatsink and it was all over the PCB. I know that most reports say that Arctic Silver isn't conductive and is only minimally capacitive, but... that card was totally dead until I cleaned all that paste off. Then it worked fine for years.

Anyway! Post some pics of your card. If it's the same as mine I can see if mine still works and try to upload the BIOS for you.

Thank you for responding.
This is a great idea, Find the BIOS from a working card to re-write mine! I wonder if vogons could start a repository to keep these old cards alive. Even if the BIOS files were hosted somewhere else like Archive.org. I suspect as time goes on more a more cards might stop working due to bit rot of the vga BIOS.
Here are the pics of my PNY MX200 PCI 32MB:

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-02-26, 00:55:

Thank you for responding. This is a great idea, Find the BIOS from a working card to re-write mine! I wonder if vogons could sta […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-22, 18:29:

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-02-22, 02:25:

Great work fixing the card! I have a PNY Geforce2MX200 32MB PCI that has a corrupt BIOS too. No idea where I would find a BIOS image for it though.

Can you post some pictures of your card? I have a PNY MX200 PCI card that I've had for over 20 years. When I was in high school a classmate in one of my computer classes gave it to me because it was "dead". When he gave it to me it had what looked like an entire tube of Arctic Silver gushing out from under the heatsink and it was all over the PCB. I know that most reports say that Arctic Silver isn't conductive and is only minimally capacitive, but... that card was totally dead until I cleaned all that paste off. Then it worked fine for years.

Anyway! Post some pics of your card. If it's the same as mine I can see if mine still works and try to upload the BIOS for you.

Thank you for responding.
This is a great idea, Find the BIOS from a working card to re-write mine! I wonder if vogons could start a repository to keep these old cards alive. Even if the BIOS files were hosted somewhere else like Archive.org. I suspect as time goes on more a more cards might stop working due to bit rot of the vga BIOS.
Here are the pics of my PNY MX200 PCI 32MB:

Your card looks very similar to mine, though the capacitor layout is a bit different and mine has a matching green heatsink on the back of the board behind the voltage regulator. Come to think of it... that's a pretty weird feature! I've had this card for so long I've never even thought about it. I don't think I have any other cards in my collection with heatsinks attached to the PCB to absorb heat from the VRM. How strange! EDIT: Managed to find one other picture of this card online... seems pretty uncommon.

Anyway... I don't know what the best method is to dump a video BIOS without pulling the chip and using an EPROM programmer\reader, but I used NSSI under DOS which has a convenient "Save Video BIOS" feature. It saves them in .vbi format, but I would imagine you can rename this to whatever extension you need, assuming this is just raw data.

I have attached the file, plus pictures of my card. I hope it helps!

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-02-22, 02:25:

Great work fixing the card! I have a PNY Geforce2MX200 32MB PCI that has a corrupt BIOS too. No idea where I would find a BIOS image for it though.

Thank you!
Finding BIOSes is sometimes really difficult. I am working on a Gainward GeForce 2MX at the moment. I did not have the time to finish the project yet, but here are a few reference BIOS version.
You could extract the BIOS of your card, open it in a HEX editor and compare with some of BIOSes found on this site: http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/nvbios.htm

I totally agree that we should have a central storage of old VGA BIOSes.
TechPowerUp doesn't have older cards in their VGA BIOS Collection.

BitsUndBolts wrote on 2023-02-27, 09:22:

Thank you! Finding BIOSes is sometimes really difficult. I am working on a Gainward GeForce 2MX at the moment. I did not have th […]
Show full quote

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-02-22, 02:25:

Great work fixing the card! I have a PNY Geforce2MX200 32MB PCI that has a corrupt BIOS too. No idea where I would find a BIOS image for it though.

Thank you!
Finding BIOSes is sometimes really difficult. I am working on a Gainward GeForce 2MX at the moment. I did not have the time to finish the project yet, but here are a few reference BIOS version.
You could extract the BIOS of your card, open it in a HEX editor and compare with some of BIOSes found on this site: http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/nvbios.htm

I totally agree that we should have a central storage of old VGA BIOSes.
TechPowerUp doesn't have older cards in their VGA BIOS Collection.

I agree that such a repository would be a fantastic idea. I would suggest also compiling "most wanted" list of devices that are known to have bit rot issues or are known to use BIOS chips that have bit rot issues on other cards. I'm pretty sure that the one on the PNY MX200 above is similar if not identical to the ones that have similar issues on Voodoo 3 cards. Probably not a coincidence. Also, these cards all ran pretty hot back in the day, which probably doesn't help the BIOS chips to age any more gracefully. Getting all of those BIOS files before they all rot would probably be a good goal.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-26, 01:48:

Your card looks very similar to mine, though the capacitor layout is a bit different and mine has a matching green heatsink on t […]
Show full quote

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-02-26, 00:55:

Thank you for responding. This is a great idea, Find the BIOS from a working card to re-write mine! I wonder if vogons could sta […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-22, 18:29:

Can you post some pictures of your card? I have a PNY MX200 PCI card that I've had for over 20 years. When I was in high school a classmate in one of my computer classes gave it to me because it was "dead". When he gave it to me it had what looked like an entire tube of Arctic Silver gushing out from under the heatsink and it was all over the PCB. I know that most reports say that Arctic Silver isn't conductive and is only minimally capacitive, but... that card was totally dead until I cleaned all that paste off. Then it worked fine for years.

Anyway! Post some pics of your card. If it's the same as mine I can see if mine still works and try to upload the BIOS for you.

Thank you for responding.
This is a great idea, Find the BIOS from a working card to re-write mine! I wonder if vogons could start a repository to keep these old cards alive. Even if the BIOS files were hosted somewhere else like Archive.org. I suspect as time goes on more a more cards might stop working due to bit rot of the vga BIOS.
Here are the pics of my PNY MX200 PCI 32MB:

Your card looks very similar to mine, though the capacitor layout is a bit different and mine has a matching green heatsink on the back of the board behind the voltage regulator. Come to think of it... that's a pretty weird feature! I've had this card for so long I've never even thought about it. I don't think I have any other cards in my collection with heatsinks attached to the PCB to absorb heat from the VRM. How strange! EDIT: Managed to find one other picture of this card online... seems pretty uncommon.
20230225_212048 (Custom).jpg
20230225_204601 (Custom).jpg
20230225_204613 (Custom).jpg

Anyway... I don't know what the best method is to dump a video BIOS without pulling the chip and using an EPROM programmer\reader, but I used NSSI under DOS which has a convenient "Save Video BIOS" feature. It saves them in .vbi format, but I would imagine you can rename this to whatever extension you need, assuming this is just raw data.

I have attached the file, plus pictures of my card. I hope it helps!

Ok, thanks so much for this BIOS. My card before would not even allow the computer to POST when installed. So to flash it, I booted to DOS, and um installed the card in an empty PCI slot (no other cards installed). Then used the
Wfflash app, it could see something, but didn't have correct data or flash rom type, so rebooted the computer and it came back up and saw the card in Wfflash (sort of, showed "Find NV device" at top of screen still). Flashed the BIOS and now the card allows the computer to POST normally and outputs a picture at the BIOS screen but the computer wont boot into DOS or Windows with card installed. Just goes to a blank screen after BIOS splash screen and never shows anything or any activity. Comparing the BIOS dates, it appears the one I dumped from my card (had a strange checksum) was 51KB and showed a date of 06/21/02, and your PNY BIOS shows a earlier 9/21/01 date. I am wondering if I still need a different BIOS (newer) before it will work. Attached is the dump of my corrupted BIOS if anyone wants to look at it (I have no clue). Anyways I feel I am closer to making this card work, but just not quite there to have it fully functioning.

Hm, interesting. Remembers me how I bricked my Diamond Viper 550 then desoldering and reprogramming the PLCC flashrom in a programmer, soldered back and it lives again...

I woud fear about bit rotting in 40+ years old EPROMs but not in decade newer FlashROMs. Data retention should be like 100 years or so but who really tried that? It's just a guess based on some fast aging simulation at high temperature... For this reason I dumped all socketed memories I have via a programmer to have a backup. But lot of newer HW contains soldered SMD memories or GAL logic that are not easy to dump :\ For dumping nVidia VBIOS from living card just use nvflash tool that really does a dump of the flashrom and don't use generic tools that only dumps a shadow RAM copy because the image in RAM can be runtime patched/decompressed or incomplete. Newer cards already have larger flashROMs than 64kB that's not fully accesible in memory below 1MB...

Hi, which driver is the best for the ELSA Synergy II -32 PCI ?

I used Elsa windows drivers, they contains some advanced utilities compared to bare windows drivers but I didn't compare speed etc...

Hello to All,
I have an Elsa Victory Erazor, and I have a similar problem with it.
Does not output video. Although it works under Windows as Riva 128 as secondary card.
Already suspected of bios corruption, and tried the old Elsa flashing DOS tool with its corresponding Rom, but it failed to identify the card.

What flashing tool/bios should I try?
Does this "Leadtek wfflash utility" will work with my board?
The only way I can boot up with this board using another good one toghether.
But I´m wary of messing with the good board.
Can someone explain me how to use this tool? I cannot find anything online about it.
My machine does not boot up only with this card inserted.

Thanks, Celso