G400 and no DOS (Hello Jadawin!)

[Rollo]

I have exactly the same problems as Jadawin and i will look for a pci-card to refresh the bios. But im not a tecnician an have no idea what you specialists discussed about "flashing with PINS and bios...". Can I use progbios.exe for it?

Thanks Rollo

[gbm]

Why don't you spare some time to visit my website?...

[Jadawin]

Hi!

Be very careful, that is exactly how my problems started. If you need information about flashing take a very close look at gmb's matrox page: (but the bios recovery information is not for the g400 in special, but nontheless extremly useful)
http://grafi.ii.pw.edu.pl/gbm/matrox

You'll need the bios package from matrox, it can be found on the matrox homepage drivers section.

You can try to use ubioswin (a windows prg) to create an emergency disk, which will contain your "old" bios called save.bin. When ubioswin tries to flash the bios after creating the disk, you will get a "0x0300" error. I don't know what that means, but I guess it's some kind of checksum error.

Assuming you read (and printed out) gmb's bios recovery information and have an old PCI card to go into dos , now do a dump of your PINS with progbios -d >mypins.txt

Now take a look at the mypins.txt. When I had those problems, I had lots of crap inside. Ok, how do you know, if your pins are crap or ok? Here are the PINS of a 32 MB Dual Head g400 (I x-ed out the serial):

;MGA Bios Programming Utility v1.94d
;(C) Matrox Graphics Inc. (1999)
;
Fill: 0 127 0xFF
;Matrox G400 AGP
;VGA Enabled - BIOS V1.3


0 2 0x412e
2 1 0x80
3 1 0xff
4 2 0x0401
6 2 0xc713
8 2 2
10 2 0x0300
12 16 'XXXXXXXX'
28 6 '105B'
34 2 0x38a1
36 2 0xfff0
38 1 75
39 1 75
40 1 75
41 1 75
42 1 75
43 1 75
44 1 34
45 1 34
46 4 0
50 1 0x3f
51 1 0xff
52 1 0xff
53 1 0xc2
54 1 0xff
55 1 82
56 1 41
57 4 0x0190a419
61 4 0x24045491
65 1 126
66 1 63
67 4 0x019b8419
71 4 0x24045491
75 1 126
76 1 63
77 4 0x019b8419
81 4 0x24045491
85 1 0xff
86 2 0x0c88
88 2 0x0c88
90 1 0xee
91 2 0x2cfe
93 2 0xfff9

This is how working PINS should look like. Some values may and must vary. Now here is what MY old destroyed PINS looked like:

;MGA Bios Programming Utility v1.94d
;(C) Matrox Graphics Inc. (1999)
;
Fill: 0 127 0xFF
;Matrox G400 AGP
VGA Disabled - BIOS V1.3


- WARNING: Invalid Bios.
0 2 0x412e
2 1 0x80
3 1 0xff
4 2 0x0400
6 2 0xc622
8 2 2
10 2 0x0000
12 16 ''
28 6 ''
34 2 0xffff
36 2 0xffef
38 1 255
39 1 255
40 1 255
41 1 255
42 1 255
43 1 255
44 1 255
45 1 255
46 4 0
50 1 0xff
51 1 0xff
52 1 0xff
53 1 0x2
54 1 0xff
55 1 133
56 1 133
57 4 0x019b8419
61 4 0x042450a1
65 1 255
66 1 0
67 4 0xffffffff
71 4 0xffffffff
75 1 255
76 1 0
77 4 0xffffffff
81 4 0xffffffff
85 1 0xff
86 2 0x0088
88 2 0x0088
90 1 0xee
91 2 0xffff
93 2 0xffff

I didn't change anything here. (Don't care for that VGA disabled or enabled message. It only tells you if the g400 was the active card or not)

Now if your PINS look something like THAT, you found your problem. If you try to flash your bios with that pins (like I did without having the information) your g400 will be completly dead (like mine was).

But strangly I did not get any PINS error when flashing! I got a checksum error.

When flashing the bios, the PINS are taken inside the NEW bios because of the information of the PINS(16 mb or 32 MB, dual or single head, RAMDAC etc.). So what happened when I tried to flash with that -k switch? My destroyed PINS were mixed up with a working bios and I had a completely dead g400.

There is one way for you to take a look at how your own PINS should look like. Get mxinfo from gbm's page. You can analyze your save.bin to get some informations (your serial, board revision etc.). And the last two lines containing "factory options" are the information stored at 91 and 93 inside a mypins.txt. Changing them made it possible for me to use a 32MBDH PINS, which then contained the information of a 16MBSH. I changed some other things, too (serial, PCB) etc. But to get the g400 to work properly, the factory options are the most important thing.

So if you have a working PINS.txt and a working biosfile, you can flash them (prgfile -i bios.bin -s mypins.txt -k) and your matrox will be alive again!

(Sorry for that long post, but I know how Rollo feels...)

Jadawin


[This message has been edited by Jadawin (edited 11 December 1999).]

[Rollo]

Hello Jadawin

Thanks a lot for your support! I guess you have been typing for hours... Now I understand the thing much better. Tomorrow can I ask a friend for a pci-card and try to restore the bios. Considering what I have heard about troubles with the bios of the G200-cards, your informations will be usefull for others...
Rollo

[Jadawin]

That's why I now strongly suggest that everybody with a fully working g400 should save PINS and bios NOW, just in case! And I would really like to know why there's that problem with DOS appearing from one minute to the other...

To ALL: please send working PINS to gbm for his page, he already has some for older cards. I will send the 32MB DH to him this day!

Jadawin

[This message has been edited by Jadawin (edited 12 December 1999).]

[Kruzin]

Backing up the BIOS is always a good idea. I backed mine up the day I got the card, and was very happy I did, when a beta (non-Matrox) overclocker toasted my G400s BIOS.

Everyone should back up their BIOS RIGHT NOW if they have not done it yet. The utils to do it are on the drivers CD...