An NVFLASH misadventure, or how to recover from a bad bios flash!

I have an ABit Siluro GeForce2 T400.<br>
<br>
I'm using this cos I need a card with a TV-out cos I don't have a monitor, and using a TV instead. (There's not enough desktop space in my hostel room). Well, I use my PC mostly to watch VCDs, and playing low-res games like StarCraft works just fine.<br>
<br>
Base system is an Athlon Thunderbird 1200MHz on an IWill KD266 M/B.<br>
<br>
<br>
Well, most Video cards with TV-Out uses NTSC encoding by default. So I always have to boot to a B/W screen, until Windows loads and the driver can change the output to Pal-B. This is tolerable, until I felt like trying out RedHat Linux...<br>
<br>
So I found this BIOS editing software and started experimenting with it, but to no success. I still get a B/W screen even after flashing multiple times with different TV overrides. So, if someone can help me with this, it would be much appreciated.<br>
<br>
Anyway, I was rebooting my system over and over, so I stupidly decided to play around with my system bus speed at the same time, killing 2 birds with one stone.<br>
<br>
So here's the disaster: at a bus speed of 145MHz, (which has always run very stably for me, even when running Prime95), I flashed my video bios with no problem, but when I rebooted.... no display...<br>
<br>
Darkness.<br>
<br>
I concluded that the BIOS is now corrupted, and basically my T400 is now screwed. As I gathered, flashing the bios voids the manufacturer warranty.<br>
<br>
After a period of mourning, I had a brainstorm the next day (luckily, before I rushed out to purchase a replacement card). The next morning, I took my card to a friend's place, who has a few PCI Video cards lying around...<br>
<br>
Put in my T400 in the AGP slot. <br>
Put in a random video card in the PCI slot. <br>
Connected the monitor to the PCI video card. <br>
Booted up.<br>
Ran NVFLASH to read the bios a few times to make sure that it is reading from my T400 EEPROM (read the serial of the thickest looking chip on the card).<br>
Flashed the bios with a factory bios.<br>
SUCCESS.<br>
<br>
<br>
The moral of this message:<br>
i. Don't flash your bios when your bus speed is overcloced.<br>
ii. Don't throw away your old PCI SiS 8Mb 2D video card.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Norman<br>
<br>
<br>
P.S. And if anyone has managed to successfully change the TV-out to a Pal-B encoding, please tell me how it was done.<br>

eh? the TVOUT works just fine under Linux you know.. check out the TVOUT documentation, the RPM throws this somewhere in /usr/doc (if you don't have it, grab it from NVIDIA.com, the Linux drivers) .. that explain the options you have to add to your XF86Config (X Configuration File) for the TVOUT to work.. I have a GeForce2 MX400 and I run Linux too, and it works just fine on my TV with the modifications discussed in the TVOUT file.. anyways.. I take it you're a newbie to Linux, so if you want I could send you my TV XF86Config file for you to take a look at, or you could send me yours and I'll modify it for you if you want. Including some instructions as to howto install the correct drivers and stuff.. just mail 'em to vanveghel@home.nl or come to the #dutch IRC channel on nl.chatjunkies.org and ask for help there, I'll probably be there (I have no social life so.. ;-)) but the other's can (and hopefully will ;-)) help you with it too.. (although it's supposed to be a dutch chan, they (and me) 'll probably help you anyways :-)) if you want to mail me your XF86Config file, try looking for it in one of these locations (from XF86Config man page):<br>
<br>
/etc/X11/&lt;cmdline&gt;<br>
/usr/X11R6/etc/X11/&lt;cmdline&gt;<br>
/etc/X11/$XF86CONFIG<br>
/usr/X11R6/etc/X11/$XF86CONFIG<br>
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4<br>
/etc/X11/XF86Config<br>
/etc/XF86Config<br>
/usr/X11R6/etc/X11/XF86Config.&lt;hostname&gt;<br>
/usr/X11R6/etc/X11/XF86Config-4<br>
/usr/X11R6/etc/X11/XF86Config<br>
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config.&lt;hostname&gt;<br>
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config-4<br>
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config<br>
<br>
Good luck <br>
<br>
- Jasper