Quote:Hello Komponent
i had sent you the BIOS of V4 64Mpci
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after i flash the BIOS
it was still displayed 64M
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Dudes, to put it in short words, Ssstjy had asked here for assistance to confirm a possible Voodoo4 PCI with 64Mb and I offered to help him as and if I could. Knowing that I previously had some experience in modding a Voodoo4 AGP to 64Mb, he decided to accept my advices and council as they were and I will now take the liberty to present the results.
Because we suspected here the possible case of a BIOS hack -and let it be known that it is very easy to edit a BIOS to display any desired value of memory at the post-screen, a.k.a. bootscreen- I suggested a radical move to confirm or infirm the fact of a real 64M Voodoo4 PCI: to save the BIOS for further study and to flash the card with the orriginal 3DFX BIOS 1.15, downloaded from Stanto's website. The advantage was that if there would have been only a BIOS hack in place, then after flashing the Voodoo4 with the common BIOS, it would have had to show the true amount of installed RAM.
Here are some pics with the steps taken by the progress of the opperation:
After booting the PC with the "64Mb BIOS" working on the card, he goes to DOS enviroment to the folder where the flashing tool program and the ROM image resides:
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/3750/dscf0026of7.jpgSsstjy then launches the flasher with the orriginal 3DFX BIOS:
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/4840/dscf0028jw8.jpgThe new BIOS is transfered to the Voodoo4 PCI and the old one -the one reporting 64Mb- gets saved in the process:
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/9473/dscf0029dt9.jpgThe opperation is finished with no problems:
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/3244/dscf0031jn1.jpgAfter rebooting the PC... surprise; at the post-screen there are still displayed 64Mb of video memory, like before:
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/2335/dscf0034ev3.jpgOK, OK... the boot-screen still show 64Mb RAM, but how about some tests into Windows with the orriginal 3DFX BIOS 1.15 for Voodoo4 PCI, downloaded from a safe orrigin, Stanto's website:
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/600/after1ah2.jpgThe diagnose tool softwares all see a video card vith 64Mb memory...
How about the first BIOS, suspected of hacks to show an incorrect value for the installed RAM? Ssstjy was kind enough to send it to me for study. If you dudes want to check it yourself, below it is a link to download it:
http://rapidshare.com/files/30406272/SAVE.ROM.htmlAfter the first look, it is clear that none of the registers are different than they should have been. In fact, after using a HEX-editor to compare the files it is obvious that the non-matching portion is the lack of the "
www.v3info.co.uk" advertisement added into the code of the BIOS downloaded from Stanto's archive.
Now... you might know that there are ways to override the BIOS registers by hardware strapping resistors placed onto the PCB, and I cannot exclude that option; I am just stating the facts as I received them from the owner; but from my oppinion, the BIOS appears free of hacks and clean.
So, is it a true 64Mb Voodoo4 PCI? Well, we have no reason not to trust the info's from Sssty argumented so far with screen-shots and pics, or that the BIOS is not genuine. But from the pictures we can clearely see on the RAM chips the markings for 8Mb, not 16Mb modules and they are 4 of them for a total count of 32Mb. There are no visible supplementar A11 memory adress traces visible onto the PCB too...
Is this 64Mb Voodoo4 PCI the real deal? Well... look at the available evidences and decide for yourself if you can...