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First post, by iraito

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I changed the refresh rate for my g200 under win95 using the matrox screen tool ( i choose 75hz) and now i get a black screen and no signal from the GPU, if i put an s3 virge in i can use the PC normally and i can even see the g200 in the peripherals (with a yellow tag) i really don't know how to recover the card.

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If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
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Reply 1 of 16, by dionb

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What resolution were you running when you changed the setting? Do you have a newer monitor that possibly could handle the resoltion/refresh rate combo? If so, hook that one up, change setting back and see if it works again with the original monitor.

Reply 2 of 16, by iraito

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dionb wrote on 2021-05-17, 10:12:

What resolution were you running when you changed the setting? Do you have a newer monitor that possibly could handle the resoltion/refresh rate combo? If so, hook that one up, change setting back and see if it works again with the original monitor.

I don't have a monitor able to take weird refreshrates but i need to explain my current condition a little better.

I wanted to change the refreshrate in DOS, i used unirfrsh and vbehz, after a lot of messing around i probably changed something because my millennium 2 shows no signal in the BIOS and DOS while it shows up correctly in win95, i would like to know how to make the millennium 2 work in DOS again, i just want to reset whatever i changed. Then i tried my g200, with the 200 i used the default monitor app for changing the refresh rate to 75 and now it doesn't shows anything in DOS and windows.

This is making me go insane.

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If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 3 of 16, by PTherapist

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Were you not able to simply go into Safe Mode in Windows 95 with the original card and set the resolution to 640x480 16 colours? Or were you not even seeing the F8 menu?

Also remove any graphics tools you may have been playing around with from config.sys &/or autoexec.bat.

Reply 4 of 16, by iraito

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PTherapist wrote on 2021-05-17, 12:16:

Were you not able to simply go into Safe Mode in Windows 95 with the original card and set the resolution to 640x480 16 colours? Or were you not even seeing the F8 menu?

Also remove any graphics tools you may have been playing around with from config.sys &/or autoexec.bat.

Somehow i can't even see post, anything not windows is blank, i know for a fact that the bios has not been flashed, so why ? what do i need to do to reset everything ?

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If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 6 of 16, by iraito

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Pierre32 wrote on 2021-05-17, 12:46:

Weird. Pull the CMOS battery, do a clean boot off a boot disk, see what happens then?

I did pull the battery, same thing, it's as if the GPU is set to work at 75hz constantly, as if it was flashed but it wasn't , guys i'm ready to try any software to solve this.

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If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 7 of 16, by PTherapist

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Not sure if this will work, but if the PC is booting into Windows with the card on it's own (albeit without a display), try installing something like an older version of VNC server (you may need to install another graphics card temporarily to get this far). Then having just the G200 installed on it's own (no other graphics cards), boot Windows and from another PC login to the VNC server and run the matrox screen control to try and undo whatever you did. You will of course need the 2 machines linked via Ethernet.

Reply 8 of 16, by fool

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If you are using modern flat panel:

Matrox Millennium G200 "No Signal" Issues

BIOS flash fix disk can be found from the above thread.
Atleast that recovered my G200 PCI

Last edited by fool on 2021-05-17, 14:54. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 10 of 16, by iraito

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Ok i will try flashing the bios, questions i have though:

1: How do i flash the matrox millennium 2 ? can i do it from win95 ? do i create a boot disk for flashing etc. ?

2: The matrox g200 somehow doesn't even show a signal in windows, can i flash that while i use another VGA ?

3: I used the matrox recovery utility on the g200 but it just kept going for 30 minutes without stopping and nothing happened.

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If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 11 of 16, by iraito

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YES! the flashing fixed the millennium 2

ATTENTION FOR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE CHECKING THIS […]
Show full quote

ATTENTION FOR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE CHECKING THIS

Apparently the progbios utility has a hidden command to force the flashing, it's -k, so if you can't normally flash the gpu use the command like this

progbios -i 838-20.bin -k

838-20.bin is an example, you need to choose the one you need.

Now let's try fixing the g200.

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If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 12 of 16, by iraito

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I flashed the g200 with the 899-23.bin bios but now the picture is all messed up, is the gpu recoverable ?

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If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 13 of 16, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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iraito wrote on 2021-05-17, 18:03:

I flashed the g200 with the 899-23.bin bios but now the picture is all messed up, is the gpu recoverable ?

Suspect that whatever has happened (refresh rate change > BIOS recovery > BIOS flash) that at some point the PINS structure has become corrupted and you won't fix this with a simple BIOS refresh - you'll need the valid PINS.TXT for your card to repair that area as well.

This small app, MXINFO, can check the current data structure from your card and can also dump the current state of your PINS data to a txt file (as your card is currently borked you can add another card as primary video and have the G200 as secondary, then use the MXINFO -DEAD command to create the output)

Filename
MXINFO.EXE
File size
37.77 KiB
Downloads
43 downloads
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

"Matrox video BIOS data dump v0.99, GBM 08/2001
Run "MXINFO -?" for usage options.
Usage: MXINFO - analyze active BIOS
MXINFO -dead - analyze dead BIOS
MXINFO <biosfile> - analyze BIOS image from file
MXINFO -pins <pinsfile> - analyze PINS from text file

MXINFO - Card type recognition and important data dump

MXINFO v0.99 - Recognition of all G-series boards, verbose PInS dump, new boards support.

MXINFO is a basic tool for troubleshooting of BIOS failures, driver installation problems and "what do I have" confussions. It also has the capability to analyze the dead BIOS and recover PINS data from it (to be further used by Progbios.

The program dumps some important data read from Matrox card BIOS image. It can recognize and report card type and some vital parameters. Works in DOS / Win9x. MXINFO may be used to troubleshoot PINS and SUBSYS_ID problems that influence Windows driver installation.
What to look for

Card model

If "Unknown" the card will have problems with driver installation (this results from loosing some info after BIOS programming failure, but it also occurs in some brand-new G100 cards and a few old G200s).


PINS data

If the values are strange (like 355 MHz RAMDAC, strange date or memory size) - PINS structure is probably destroyed and must be restored, otherwise the Windows driver will not operate properly.


Dead BIOS

To analyze dead BIOS, use "-dead" option with MXINFO. This will not work under Windows nor under EMM386 (use "Restart in MS-DOS mode" under Win). One interesting thing about dead BIOS is that on G-series the destroyed BIOS may still contain correct PINS, which MXINFO is trying to find (and dump in PROGBIOS-compatible manner).


Clock info and refresh rates

MXINFO will show clock rates in various modes, possible clock speed reduction with add-in memory and max vertical sync frequencies with various pixel depths. Currently this should report the correct rates for G-series, and some correct rates Millenium II and Mystique. Note that these clock rates are the ones SPECIFIED in card's BIOS, not actually programmed (using overclocking utilities). See below.
"

As an example, this is the output from my Millenium G200 AGP 16MB

Filename
Mil G200 AGP.TXT
File size
1.7 KiB
Downloads
36 downloads
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception
Filename
PINS.TXT
File size
321 Bytes
Downloads
34 downloads
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception
Mil G200 AGP 16MB.jpg
Filename
Mil G200 AGP 16MB.jpg
File size
601.91 KiB
Views
501 views
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

Have a look at this link for further info

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en& … =search&pto=aue

Reply 14 of 16, by iraito

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Ok i used the program, it recognizes the card as a g200 pci eclipse but the card model is unknown g200, the base memory is also incorrect, it says 16mb but my gpu has only 8.

Here's my pin.txt, what should i do now to fix the card ?

Attachments

  • Filename
    PINS.TXT
    File size
    319 Bytes
    Downloads
    34 downloads
    File license
    Public domain

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If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 15 of 16, by iraito

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I can't find a single pins for my g200 SD pci 8mb, if anybody can provide the pins it would be fantastic.

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If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55

Reply 16 of 16, by iraito

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I took the gamble and used the pins for the g200 AGP SD and now it works, somehow i even got the 75hz both in windows and DOS.
I fixed the card and even solved the 75hz issue i had, good i guess.

https://streamable.com/omkw8n
The bitrate is horrible otherwise the game looks pretty good in the capture card.

uRj9ajU.pngqZbxQbV.png
If you wanna check a blue ball playing retro PC games
MIDI Devices: RA-50 (modded to MT-32) SC-55