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First post, by retro games 100

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I'm testing a Leadtek Winfast Titanium 200 Geforce3 video card. It came with an installation CD-ROM. On it, there's a software utility suite called WinFox. In it, there's a utility to flash the VGA BIOS! I ran this utility, and from what I can understand, the current VGA BIOS is dated 01/03/2002. I think you can use the flash utility to write your current BIOS to a disk file, as well as upgrade it to a laterversion. Does anyone have a later BIOS file for this card please? It would be interesting to flash this video card's BIOS. Thanks.

Reply 1 of 13, by Mau1wurf1977

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No Bios on the Leadtek site, but drivers are there 😀

http://www.leadtek.com/eng/support/download.a … itanium+200+TDH

You could email them and ask if they have a later BIOS.

The need to upgrade a video BIOS is uaully quite rare. At least that is what I found...

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Reply 2 of 13, by retro games 100

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Yes I did check their website, and I could email them, but I think I'll contact them some other day, because I've got other testing to do. 😀 Regarding the need to upgrade a video card's BIOS: I found that upgrading the Matrox G200 was a good idea. I'm sure I've read somewhere that some crucial fixes were introduced in their later BIOSes. These VGA BIOS files are still available today, from Matrox's legacy FTP website.

Reply 3 of 13, by Mau1wurf1977

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Something I did with newer cards, was flash the bios of another brand. I believe it was for a 7800GT and the BIOS was from another card which was a overclock model.

I did flash a BIOS once and it bricked my video card, however all you need to do is put a 2nd video card into your system and then flash your bricked card again. This worked quite well.

So from what I understand you can't totally brick a video card with a bad BIOS flash, because you can always reflash it again if you have another videocard or a system which has onboard VGA!

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Reply 4 of 13, by Zup

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That's not really true.

In the boot sequence, after the first tests, the BIOS try to recognize if there is more BIOS in the system (VGA, SCSI, SAS, Network... those things), and if another BIOS is found, the motherboard BIOS will give control to that BIOS.

Usually, a bad flash will erase the VGA BIOS or broke it in a way that it is no longer recognized as an external BIOS. But it is still posible to produce a program that it's recognized as a BIOS but hangs the processor.

In that case, you must dismount the BIOS chip and reflash it with an EPROM programmer.

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Reply 5 of 13, by Mau1wurf1977

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Well you can't say it's not true, because you wheren't there with me when I rescued my card 😀

There are also a ton of people on various forums that have managed to do they exact same thing. I guess it's one of these cases where theory and practical results differ...

As long as you have another videocard or onboard video you can reflash your card with your old card and all is good.

I had to do this a few times in the past and it that trick has never let me down.

Reply 6 of 13, by 5u3

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Yup, that's right. You can always resurrect a wrongly flashed video card if you have a backup VGA to start the computer and re-flash the dead one.

Reply 7 of 13, by Old Thrashbarg

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Yup, that's right. You can always resurrect a wrongly flashed video card if you have a backup VGA to start the computer and re-flash the dead one.

If you're familiar enough with the commands for the flash utility, it's usually even possible to do it without an extra video card. I've blindly recovered a few bad flashes like that.

Reply 8 of 13, by Mau1wurf1977

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Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I've blindly recovered a few bad flashes like that.

Wow! That's quite impressive 🤣

Reply 9 of 13, by Sune Salminen

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retro games 100 wrote:

Does anyone have a later BIOS file for this card please?

Try mvktech.net

You don't have to use that fugly Winfast stuff. You should be able to extract the BIOS as well as flash it with NVFlash.

Reply 10 of 13, by retro games 100

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I searched mvktech.net's driver repository for "winfast", but unfortunately they only had files for the Geforce 5 and 6 series of cards. Thanks for the advice though, because they might have other useful stuff..

Reply 11 of 13, by Sune Salminen

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Search for Leadtek instead of Winfast or try some other search term.

There are BIOSes there for later Leadtek cards, I submitted the BIOS for my Leadtek 9800GTX+ when I bought it.

Reply 13 of 13, by udam_u

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Few years ago I modded bios in my leadtek GF5900XT card (changed memory timings and card clocks). I used to use jimmor guide:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=29230

Currently my bro (haker305 on Vogons registered) is using GF6800GS AGP which has unlocked pipes in bios. (: