bricked visiontek 6950's 1gb atiflash = nothing

[dominiksf]

i was in the process of unlocking the shaders on 3 VisionTek 6950 1gb, and jacked up two of the cards using the wrong bios. I was able to fix everything back to the original bios and when i went to unlock the shaders again the issues started. I've been trying to fix this for over 12 hours now and am at a complete loss...

no all of the cards show this:

i have tried atiwinflash (including cmd prompt) as well as atiflash. when i am in atiflash the atiflash -ai command bring up nothing but atiflash -i shows 1 or 2 cards (depending on how many are plugged in).

i've tried following the instructions on here. deleting drivers, going into dos, using unlockrom, atiflash, etc and nothing seems to be changing what gpuz shows.

i'm connected via the igfx card at the moment, i cannot get the screen to turn on even during the bios screen if i have PGE selected

attached is the original rom for these cards View attachment orig.zip

 

[Aquinus]

Normally when you have the iGPU enabled (or some other video device as primary,) the bad one will be the second card (ids start at 0, so it would be id 1.) If you're using the "-i" flag and it's not seeing the card, it's almost always a sign that you bricked the card. It almost looks like the BIOS was only partially flashed and since GPU-Z sees it, it clearly not fully dead but it's definitely not working.

I would try booting up in DOS again and try flashing it one more time. Remember, the ID should be 1, not 2 or 0 if the iGPU is enabled and is the primary (monitor is plugged into it and it posts to that display.) If it's a no go you might be out of luck my friend.

If you give the forums a quick search there are a lot of other people who have bricked their GPUs this way too and Law-II usually has the best instructions on how to go about fixing a bad flash if it's fixable.

You can find some of his instructions in a thread like this one.

 

[dominiksf]

It sees the cards using -i

when i use -ai it just hangs

when i use -i it it only showing me the cards in the PCIe slots but not the on board graphics which is what the monitor is plugged into atm (it is an intel board so perhaps that's why).

so adapter ID is 0 and BN is 1 for the first 6950

 

[dominiksf]

i just followed the instructions here. http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2847903&postcount=11

left out only 1 card on the mobo. and used atiflash

then rebooted and changed bios to auto, and now at least one of the 6950's is posting and i'm booting into windows, which keeps on refreshing at log in... but at least it appears the card is working....

now to restore windows...

 

[Bo$$]

Doesn't he need to remove drivers when flashing?

 

[dominiksf]

Doesn't he need to remove drivers when flashing?

Yup. I didn't realize that, most of the directions online just say make a usbkey, use atiflash and booom... it seems like you are are making minor changes then it does not matter. but if you pick another rom (I was trying to unlock shaders) it can really mess things up.

btw... i now have 3 visiontek 6950 1GB - and GPUZ is showing one of them with unlocked shaders even though i flashed all there with the same file. at one point before all this i had 2 with unlocked shaders... but i think i am just going to accept reality

that was a fun way to spend the last 18 hours...

 

[Aquinus]

that was a fun way to spend the last 18 hours...

That's why I don't do stuff like that anymore. It's so time consuming and you might brick your hardware. It's not worth the risk imo. At least it sounds like it came back to life.

 

[dominiksf]

yes I learned my lesson here not to mess around unless i have a really good reason. luckily it's all working again

glad these forums exist b/c no way i would have been able to fix this without that write up

 

[Aquinus]

yes I learned my lesson here not to mess around unless i have a really good reason. luckily it's all working again

glad these forums exist b/c no way i would have been able to fix this without that write up

I'm glad. Law-II makes some really good instructions.