HIS IceQ X HD6950 bios flash problem

Ok, so here is the problem.
I got HIS IceQ X HD6950 2GB and decided (even though it does not have a bios switch) to flash it to 6970. I did use the reference HIS 6970 bios from this forum. Backed up my bios, run the -unlockrom command and flashed with the –f -p flags. It all went well – verification showed the same size rom where ssid changed from 6100 to E400.
Tried to re-boot and card went dead. Ok, I know I should not “cross my fingers and hope for the best” and flash non-reference card with a reference bios (I get to it below but I think my memory access got hosed).

Oh, well – I did put different card in other PCIe slot, used that to boot (my 6950 is now id 1 not 0), went to GPU-Z and it confirms: I can’t see the memory on the card (it shows 0 for the ram amount) shaders are also low 770 and clock is low, but this can be because I may be running in the different clock mode, right? All monitors are working fine (all temps are reported ok) – so in reality bios is NOT corrupted and I have an access to the card – good news, right? I also did compare the bios I used to flash with the rom extracted from the card – perfect match – so bios is NOT corrupted.

So as the next step I did run the -unlockrom and the attempted to re-flash to my original bios and that’s when the funny thing happens – no matter what I do, the bios remains unflashed.

I did try if I’m communicating with the bios during the flash by just trying to flash with –p and I get “SSID missmatch” error (as expected) I did try to change the SSID in the cards bios via using –mi flag and I get “Rom could not be erased”, but when I use the same bin as I have on the card I get a correct message of “Bios already flashed” – so comm. Between the writer and the card’s bios is good, it just looks like bios is in the permanent “read only” state (bear in mind – this is not dual bios – switch is not there). I figured since the bios was not physically locked (made read only in the hardware) I should be able to re-flash it to the original bios, right? Is there any chance that the unlock bit on the bios I used to flash is in the different address than usual and and that’s why I can’t override it with the –unlockrom command?

So to sum up:

1. Bios is not corrupted
2. Write communication is good
3. Bios is not read only in the hardware (since I did flash it)
4. New (flashed) bios will not unlock so I can’t restore it from my back up

Any help is greatly appreciated – I can always RMA the card, but now I actually got intrigued by this issue..

Thanks

flashrom sees the card - if you try to flash with out -f you should get the ssid miss match error. Problem is in the bios unlock. seems like some 6970 bios are soft lock and the unlock bit is in the different memory address than usual - I did some digging with read-write bios writer (you can also compare bios hex) before and after -unlockrom - no difference. I wish I had a source code for the atiwinflash so I could see which memory address -unlockrom tries to write to (tried to figure it out looking at the assembly, but could not) - I was hoping that the "gurus" would know this, but it looks like sometime they are just a script kiddies (not all, please don't flame me - but some) - I will post the resolution to this problem soon (if I get really annoyed I will just make my own package around one of the available bios hack tools, so I will not have this problem again. Anyways - my fault - I should not load 6970 bios just update my 6950 (memory timings or a controller comm were so different that the memory was not accessible on the new card)