Bios for Sapphire "Grouper" A9RX480 mobo?

[trodas]

Bios for Sapphire "Grouper" A9RX480 mobo?
Since the absolutely lame Sapphire disable the bios downloads for the A9RX480 there:
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presenta...006&lid=1&os=7
...and tech support did give me the very same link I posted above, so I can't get the BIOS, nor the DOS flasher - not to mention some guide that could be handy, because I feel that only by completely erasing the settings the mobo could post... (eg. visibly post, now it posting and seems working as much, as even blind flash is possible, but NOTHING is on the screen!)

So, anyone can provide me with the Sapphire bios:
PI-A9RX480 BIOS(2K060417)
...and the flasher:
Awardflash(8.63a)
...preferably with some readme on how to get the settings completely erased?

Thanks a lot!

[trodas]

Hoooray, sapphire tech support provided me working link to the latest bios, however no help at all, because this is old bios that I already have:


Hello, tech support!
Thanks for the bios and Awdflash. Unfortunately, this is the bios from 17. 4. 2006, witch can be found even there:
http://ax2.old-cans.com/grouper/
That means I already tried to flash it, yet nothing happend. So, are there any other recommendations how to proceed?

I tried Uniflash v1.40, because it can output log, and it give my this log file:

00:00:51.95: UniFlash v1.40 started: A:\UNIFLASH.EXE -REBOOT -CMOSC -UNLOCK -LOG -E bios.bin
00:00:52.94: Chipset detected: (1002,5950,01) ** (1002,4377,80)
00:00:52.94: Flat Real Mode initialized
00:00:53.99: CMOS size detected: 256b
00:00:53.99: Found DMI 2.3 board info: RX480-SB450
00:00:54.98: System ROM selected
00:00:55.96: Beginning Flash ROM detection...
00:00:55.96: DetectLoop
00:00:56.95: DetectLoop
00:00:57.94: Flash ROM detection complete
00:00:57.94: Allocating memory block 00080000
00:00:58.98: Allocating memory block 00080000
00:00:59.97: Allocating memory block 00001080
00:00:59.97: Flash ROM chip detected: PMC Pm49FL004/3.3V (LPC/FWH)
00:01:00.96: Flash ROM ID: 9D6E,FFFF
00:01:01.95: Exiting UniFlash...
00:01:02.99: Turning off logging, shutting down to real mode
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So it is not even clear, if the flash happend or not to me. However still nothing on the display is shown up

Please advise.

Thanks.


PS. Also I must say, that this line in autoexec.bat doest NOT work:
awdflash bios.bin /PY /SN /CC /CD /CP /R

...while when I use this line:

awdflash bios.bin /PY /SN /CC /CD /CP /F /Tiny /R

Then in worked and flashed (slowly, as the "Tiny" force the loading during flashing, so, it is slow and /F should snad for: "The key /F enables AwardFlash to reprogram FlashROM with the algorithms of the current BIOS version. If a mainboard peculiarities do not allow applying AwardFlash Writer algorithms, you should use the key /F.") and then rebooted the machine quite well. However, still the display did not kick on. Eg, still nothing on the screen is shown up, witch is the major problem since the beginning.

So I managed the Awdflash to run AND flash the bios into the mobo, however computer, that did not display a thing is simply useless...

Of course, there is a positive way to look at it - one did not need monitor, nor graphic card for this thing

[trodas]

Moderator on the PC perspective forum told me, that he had the best results with the old bios from 26.9.2005, so I tried to flash it using the Awdflash and it really "helped" - the mobo is now not even posting.

After flashing the old bios from 26.9.2005, the machine just flick 7x fast the led near the CMOS battery and that it is. Then it try to post, yet no post, no image on screen, nothing. And then again the led 7x flick and again it try post and again fail... That way it is much worser, because it is IMPOSSIBLE to flash a new bios now...!
Not even blind flash is possible, when the machine refuse to post.

That somewhat confirm that the bios is the root source of problem AND it seems the older bios is better, by judging that the monitor is getting frequently some signal pulses, so it not go to sleep, instead it showing in cycles the error message about videosignal 0 kHz vertical and 0 kHz horizontal... (Eizo F35 Flexscan)

So, more closer to the root of the issue, but yet still far from any solution at all.

Is there are any emergency bios flash (like the Ctrl + Home for Amibios - but this is Awardbios) or what can I do, to get the PC to work again, like it did well for me before? The "amergency" Award bios require the machine to actually boot, witch is not the case there...
http://www.biosman.com/biosrecovery.html

Tech support seems to be "really" helpfull:

Sorry that, we would suggest you to upgrade the MB due to even this MB BIOS still cannot help to boot up the MB.
Thanks.

PS. Hoooray! When exchanged the PCIEx gfx card to a PCI one GF2 suxxka, then the machine post (altrough nothing on the screen is shown up) and flashing nicely again! Now that is a improvement! It just beep as it finished the flash! Cool. At least the machine can post and the problem might be in the GFX card then... maybe only a externally powerd graphic card works? Dunno. I must try the old card in there...

PS2. Almost there! Got the machine to display something - finally! By using the old gfx card (even w/o pluged the external power cord!) it nicely show up the logo, allow me to do bios settings and work as it should! W/O a glitch! Now that means, that the mobo is working. It just did not like the MSI GeForce 210 589/1024MHz 512MB DDR2 card for one reason or another. It is a ver. 1.1, and it was tested in another PC and it worked there. No idea why it fail to work now...
Suggested settings BIOS to make the card work?

This [censored] card refuse to work: http://www.msi.com/product/vga/N210-MD51...cification

Meanwhile the board is passing memtest test with no errors twice Seems good!


When way more powerfull and way more PSU demanding 7800 GTX works fine then it make me wonder, why MSI GeForce 210-MD512H did not work at all

Some BIOS settings are really interesting - how about to tweak these?

LTD Configuration - Enabled
Upstream LTD Bus Width - 16bit
Downstream LTD Bus Width - 16bit
LTD Bus Frequency - Auto (1GHz, 800MHz, 600MHz, 400MHz, 200MHz)

(I know, this have more to do with the CPU memory controler that GFX card, but who knows?)

PCIE GFX Core Payload Size - 64Bytes (32Bytes, 16Bytes)
PCIE GPP Core Payload Size - 64Bytes (32Bytes, 16Bytes)
NB-SB Port Configuration - Default (Enhanced)
PCI-E GFX Link Width - x16 (x12, x8, x4, x2, x1)
Assign IRQ For VGA - Enabled (Disabled)

...any suggestions? Tried 32Bytes (for the PCIE GFX Core Payload Size|PCIE GPP Core Payload Size settings), but no change. Eg. NO POST with this MSI card...

[trodas]

I realized, where the problem is. Since the mainboard Sapphire A9RX480 PCIE slots are version 1.0a, then any graphic card have to be backwards compatible with PCIE 1.0a in order to work. Since there is, in the MSI GeForce 210-MD512H, mentioned only support for PCIE v2.0, then it probably means that it will never work on PCIE v1.0a and hence I need a gfx card, that is backward compatible with PCIE v1.0a...
And this card is not it.

So, unless there could be done a bios tweak, that allow this backward compatibility, there is no way to make the card work in Sapphire A9RX480. [censored]!


It should be mentioned, however, that the Sapphire A9RX480 mobo is working fine with these graphic cards:
PNY 6800 GS
Point of View GeForce 7300GT
Point of View GeForce 8600GT
Galaxy GTX 650 (PCIE v3.0!) ...and probably a with a lot more... it just does NOT work with the MSI GeForce 210-MD512H ...