Help recovering bad bios flash on 3870

[Kei]

Hey, does anybody know the steps to recover a bios after a bad flash. I was flashing one of my cards and lost power and...well you know what happens with that. So now that card doesn't boot/post (no beep though all the keyboard lights flash). Everything else runs fine but a no go on the card so far.

I have another 3870 in the system now (I've got 2) and I still have the original bios from the Diamond card which is the one that's not working right now. The Visiontek works just fine though so....does anybody know of a way to make this work?

I'm using an ASUS M3A32 790FX board if that helps.

K

[farlex85]

Man talk about bad timing. Can you just reflash the original bios?

[Laurijan]

try if atiflash can locate the faulty card.

"atiflash -i".....to locate card

[Kei]

Thanks for the quick replies but I fixed it about 1 minute after posting. :p

I really appreciate the quick replies though guys thanks again :respect:

K

[Laurijan]

Plz tell what you did so that this thread may help others as well..

[Kei]

Okay sorry about the wait fellas I needed some sleep and Formula One Qualifying is on right now so I'll be brief. ;)

I was rather lucky this time as I started to prepare a USB boot disc to try blind flashing the card. Anyway the system would not post with the card in any slot even if I had the other card installed which is normal when this sort of thing happens.

I then decided to try something different and pulled the card out of the system and put in just the Visiontek card and booted to make sure it was not damaged as well. All was well with that card so I shut down the system again and installed the Diamond card back into the main slot it was in (the Visiontek card was installed in the 2nd blue 16x slot). Still a no go so I removed the card again and put the Visiontek card in the lead slot where it is now.

After doing that I installed the Diamond card again into the 2nd blue 16x slot and still no boot. So I had an idea since this is a PCI-E 2.0 board and they have more than enough power for a card instead of the 75W limit of old 1.0 versions I installed the card and DID NOT plug the cards power in.

I went on about booting the system and though it took a short while (~30 seconds) it did post and boot into Windows which is good. I went to control panel to see if it was there and alas it was not even recognized as being plug in by Windows, Everest, nor GPU-Z.

I let the sytem run for a few minutes to check on the status of the card and whether or not it would install itself but it did not. I checked for power and the card was indeed not fried as the power till worked and the fan was working properly.

After I saw that I shutdown the system completely and plugged the card back in (power cord) and tried to boot again. This time it did boot with the card installed in the slot with the power plugged in. When I got to Windows I didn't even have to install the card as it was immediately recognized as a 3800 series card. It's been working fine ever since. :)

If you do have this problem I'd try what I did just last night as it may work and the card may right itself. At no time did I install the crossfire bridge during the problem so I don't believe that'd be necessary nor even be recognized...it may prevent you from booting as well.

I hope this helps someone out there bring a card back from "the dead" status it may be in.

K