Acer Travelmate 7720G and VGA upgrade

[andyzan]

Hi to all, first my best compiments for this forum! My apologizes in advance if this is not the right section

Then, I have the laptop in title, that originally comes with ATI VGA.

Now I discovered that any VGA upgrade, swapping to nVidia, is not supported.
A VGA upgrade is allowed just between ATI cards

So, now I'm feeling like there is some kind of hidden limitation in the motherboard's BIOS, and I was looking for something to have a confirmation nor a BIOS mod that supersede the original one (v.1.35), voiding that kind of limitation, letting me, finally, to install a nVidia VGA card.

I already try with a 9650GT MXM II, 1Gb GDDR, but I get just one long beep and two short, at the power up, so you know better than me what that mean.

My idea, right now, is to try a BIOS update but with an ACER Travelmate 7730 version, that is selled with nVidia cards, but I have fear to get my laptop definitly not working. Just you can give me a shot on the head for that or just a confirmation, if, instead, there is a better solution (like a BIOS mod), I'm here just to learn by you

Many tks in advance

[1234s282]

Even though its not nvidia , you can buy an ATI 4570 or 4650 from http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/7720G.html

We could try taking the Nvidia VGA part of the Travelmate 7730 bios and using it to replace the ATI VGA part of the Travelmate 7720G bios but this will be quite risky!

Basically i think the reason that nvidia cards wont work by default is of course because if the machine came with ATI , then its VGA bios component in the official bios will be ATI , not Nvidia.

I also am having some trouble grabbing the rom image out of the latest version of your bios v1.35 , please can you download it from acers site , run the .exe and check your temp folder for the extracted rom file (Start , run , %TEMP%) , look for the most recent folder created.

Admin

[andyzan]

Hi and tks for the answer.

Unfortunately I got ATI one time on my desktop and I promise to myself to get it NEVER anymore.
With this laptop, instead, I'm getting problems since I bought it, even with the drivers. So if I have to spend money, for any VGA, it will be for nVidia only for the rest of my life.

I don't want to give one cent to ATI anymore

The BIOS file downloaded from Acer is a zip file that contains all necessary but separated, it is not like other vendors that include everything in a exe file, just discovered right now.

For your convenience I upload the ROM file, if you need any more files please let me know, the other files in the zip folder are:

- ACERACDC.exe
- CLB.135.bat
- CLB-135.WPH
- HFB135US.bld
- Phlash16.exe
- And, for last, a folder named Winflash32

Tks in advance

[andyzan]

This is one of the main reasons I want to swap to nvidia, that's now happen as soon as you push the button to switch on the laptop.

I strongly hope it is a VGA problem and not a motherboard...

[andyzan]

I discovered that I downloaded the BIOS from an old Acer Assistance web site, that's the reason why I found easly the ROM file.

Now I tried to open the ROM with the Phoenix BIOS Editor 2.2, but, sincerely, I was wondering somthing understandable. Over there everything is frustrasting a newbie like me

[andyzan]

Ok, tks for your help.

I bought another laptop with nVidia inside, that's easier than anything else.

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