Bill's Workshop -- Unoffical 3Dfx Banshee Troubleshooting and Game Guide

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VIDEO CARDS
Unofficial 3Dfx Banshee
Troubleshooting and Game Guide

For people with Guillemot cards which went dead after a BIOS flash...

The official Guillemot procedure taken from a post on the 3Dfx.com Banshee newsgroup:

This method reflashes the card with the NEW ROM. The idea is that repeating the process will cause it to work - Bill

Put your old GFX card back in the PC and check that the PC is able to boot from a Floppy.
Then make a DOS boot disk and copy SGRAM.COM, GP_PCI.ROM (GP_AGP.ROM for AGP card), FLASH.EXE & DOS4GW.EXE from the c:\phoenix directory to the floppy and then create an
autoexec.bat on the disk with 2 lines:
SGRAM
FLASH GP_PCI.ROM (FLASH GP_AGP.ROM for AGP card)

Replace the Phoenix card and boot from the floppy and your display should be
restored.

Adam Field
Technical Manager

Guillemot Limited

An alternative method taken from the Guillemot forum.

This method restores the original ROM saved as SAVE.ROM by the flash process - Bill

Like several other people on this board, I followed the directions to update the BIOS with the ROM included with the RC4 drivers, and ended up with a dead card. After a lot of swearing, I was able to figure out a way to get it back. If you're fortunate enough to have access to a functioning video card, or better yet a 2nd computer, this might work for you.

1) Get your computer back to a point where you can work with it (i.e. put your old card back in).
2) Boot to DOS.
3) Format a bootable system disk.
4) Copy all the *.COM, *.EXE, and *.ROM files (from the Phoenix driver folder) onto the bootable system diskette (that would be Agp.com, DOS4gw.exe, flash.exe, gp_agp.com, gp_pci.com, Pci.com,Sgram.com)
5) Rename the SAVE.ROM file on the diskette to gp_pci.ROM (or whatever the appropriate name is - gp_agp.ROM for an AGP card)
6) Create an AUTOEXEC.BAT file on the diskette with the line A:\PCI.COM in it.
7) Replace the Phoenix in the computer, insert the diskette in the drive, and reboot.

I did this, and I was able to get back to the old BIOS. Not sure whether to try RC4 again, but I guess what have I got to lose. Hope this helps out.

Kyle

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