Fixing a completely gone wrong ATI BIOS flash
From TPU Reference
The other day I was trying to recover a Radeon X1300 which was flashed with the wrong X1300 BIOS.
To do that I put an X1900 CrossFire (first card I had handy) into the primary PCI-E slot and the X1300 into the secondary
slot.
As always I was in a hurry so I ran: atiflash -f -newbios -p 0 x1300.bin
Heart Attack!! Realize what just happened?
The 0 stands for adapter 0 which is the PRIMARY card, so my X1900 CF now had an X1300 BIOS on it.
So I thought, I'll just flash it back... Problem: the X1900 CF PCI device ID changed from 7249 to 7346. ATI's flashing
programs query the device ID to know which GPU to expect, so the software can use the right flashing method.
Unfortunately a device with 7346 doesn't exist at all so ATIFlash didn't even show the card as installed.
The only way I could imagine how to fix this is by disconnecting the flash memory somehow so that the device ID does
not get changed (all ATI GPUs have a default value which can be overwritten by the ROM. Not all bits can be changed,
that's why I ended up with 7346 instead of a real X1300 device ID).
This is the flash ST 25P05 flash chip of the X1900 CrossFire. It is identical to the M25P05 for which you can easily find
the datasheet online.
Unsoldering the chip was out of question, it is way too small to do with my equipment. Another idea I had was
unsoldering just one pin, but that's very hard as well with all the other components around. Also when trying to lift a pin
you often lift the PCB trace with it which pretty much means dead card.
Fixing a completely gone wrong ATI BIOS flash - TPU Reference
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2 of 2 30.12.2007 17:53
The datasheet was talking about pin 1 being "Chip Select". When a low voltage is present at pin 1, the flash memory is
active and will respond to read/write requests. When a high voltage is present it will go to sleep mode - exactly what I
need.
The "high" voltage can be grabbed from pin 8 which is the +3.3V supply voltage of the IC. So I soldered a wire from pin
1 to pin 8 in hopes that the card would now be unable to read the flash memory. Problem: after booting the flash chip
can't be accessed for _writing_ the backup flash because I disabled the whole flash chip with the wire. So I deliberately
created a weak solder joint on pin 8 that would break with a very slight twist.
After crossing fingers and powering on (this time CF card in secondary slot, another card in master to boot from)
ATIFlash did indeed detect the card. Yay I can flash my old BIOS back! Before starting the flashing process I wiggled on
the cable and the pin 8 connection did come off and the chip could be accessed by the flashing program.
Woohooo. Card is alive again and can be abused now for further benchmarking.
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This page was last modified 20:57, 16 December 2007 by Jimmy 2004. Based on work by W1zzard and Anonymous
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, I'll try to flash it when I get back home 
