Compaq NX9600 X600 problems? BIOS flash?

[d1kh3d]

Hi all,

My name is Marc and I have been reading this site for a few years now. It is great. I have never had to post up cause I could always find answers to my issues in existing posts.

But alas, the time has come where I need a lot of help. I have a COmpaq NX9600 with an on-board X600-128MB video card. The laptop still works great but, the video has lots of lines in it now. It is no longer covered by warranty and HP wants $800US for a new board. I have taken the unit apart to see if I could find any blown resistors or caps, and to clean out the dust at same time. I figure what has happened is that some of the video cards memory has become corrupt or loose. Because the memory chips are solder balls under the chips there is no way for me to resolder the loose chips(as I press on those memory chips the video is corrected).

What my question for you experts here is this: Is there a way to flash the video bios so that it will only use 64MB instead of 128 as to hopefully isolate the defective memory chips?

I am not 100% sure if this video card is a reg. X600 or a X600 Mobility? Can someone let me know if it is flashable? and Another thing, this machine has no floppy drive so I cannot use DOS floppy flashes.

Thanx a lot, Marc .

 

[Pinchy]

Its an X600 mobility, cus its on a laptop.

Now, does it use RAM or has it got dedicated memory? Because if its onboard (which i assume if its integrated into the mobo), a flash to 64mb wont help.

 

[d1kh3d]

Hi Pinchy,

I have 1GB of memory in the laptop, but the vid card has its own 128MB memory soldered to the board. The layout of the memory for the vid card has a pattern resembling the "L" shape of agp or pci-e cards on both sides of the mobo. It is not removable. But still wondering if I can flash to maybe halve the amount of mem, that way would hope to bypass defective memory.

Thanx.

 

[Pinchy]

There should be a way of flashing it. Just a note, before you do anything, back up your BIOS.

You dont need a floppy to flash in DOS, a floppy is just used to save the backed up BIOS (you cant write to a CD, altho you can read from a CD and do the flash)

So its a seperate graphics card (its not onboard the mobo), you just cant take it out?

 

[d1kh3d]

So its a seperate graphics card (its not onboard the mobo), you just cant take it out?

Yes it is onboard. The vid card is part of the motherboard and cannot be removed. The layout of the vid card is the same as a full size agp card with the memory layout being the same "L" shape and on both sides of the mobo.

How do I decide what bios to flash with? I would like to find one that has 64MB flash bios file. I do not know which brand to select(Asus, MSI, ...)

Will I be able to use Winflash, cause I cannot use floppy flash?

 

[d1kh3d]

Ok, I have been playing with ATIWinflash and ATIFLASH(I got my hands on a USB floppy drive).

When I run ATIWinflash, I get "Unsupported ROM type". Can't do anything there.

Now I have been booting from USB floppy and playing with ATIFlash and cannot even backup my own bios. I get a "error FLASH is not detected press key to continue"

I am now thinking that this Compaq mobo does not have a seperate BIOS for the vid card, but that it may be incorporated into the mobo BIOS.

Is this possible? I am getting a little pissed and confused.

 

[d1kh3d]

Here is the log file from RaBit.exe:

-- RaBiT v.2.0.0 build 616 started --
> RaBiT driver v.2.0.2 is ready
-- Your ATi video adapter low level info --
Vendor: 0x1002, SubVendor: 0x103C (Hewlett-Packard Company)
Device: 0x3150 (M24), SubSystem: 0x3082
On Board EEPROM: No ROM
Active pipelines: 4, GB_TILE_CONFIG = 0x00010011
GB_PIPE_SELECT = 0xCFFCAE04
-- Memory bus and clocking info --
Memory: 128 bits, 128 Mb
Core clock = 398.25 MHz
Memory clock = 229.50 MHz
-- Active memory timings --
tWL = 1.0
tCL = 6
tCMD = 0 clock
tSTB = tWL
tRcdRD = 4
tRcdWR = 2
tRP = 4
tRAS = 8
tRRD = 3
tR2W = CL + 2
tWR = 3
tW2R = 0
tW2Rsb = tW2R Rule
tR2R = 1
MemRR = 1C
tRFC = 20
tRBS = CL + 3.5
tERST = CL - 2
tQSREQ = CL - 2
tDQM = WL - 1
tDQS = WL - 1
tDQM_Adv = As specified
tDQS_Adv = As specified

Any takers???

Thanx!!