Any way to flash an 8800 without a floppy?

[klepp1214]

The usual story, im running vista and have a watercooled 8800 but whats the point if you cant overclock it!?!

anyone know of a way to flash the bios without a floppy drive? I dont have one in my pc or access to one but an un overclocked card = booooooo!

ideas?

[Growly]

You can burn CDs with programs like Nero to boot as if they were floppies, and you can also use bootable flash drives. A guide I saw a while back (ok, like two days ago, in another thread around here) mentioned that this was possible (although for the reviewer it was more convenient to use a floppy drive which he had lying around).

I haven't made bootable CDs except when slipstreaming service packs into Windows, but I imagine you have to set the correct boot sector and emulation type (through Nero, for example), and then copy the necessary files over.

If you google how to do that you should find success.

[Ruslan]

go to http://bootdisk.com and go to the DOS/Windows9X/Me/NT/2K/XP Excellent Bootdisks link (first one) and grab the Windows 98 SE OEM. Install WinRAR and right click boot98se.exe and select the extract to boot98se. Ignore the error messege. In the folder you will have the winb98se.IMA file. Open Nero burning rom and select CDROM (BOOT) and in the boot settings select this file as the boot image. make sure floppy emulation is enabled. the rest do as usual. put the relevant bios image and the flash program on the CD and burn away. boot the cd it will be just like a regular win 98 boot disk. select the boot with cdrom support and got to your cdrom (cd X:) where X is you cdrom drive and you are done. avoid using file names more that 8.3 charecters long because dos will not recognize them and you will have something like this xxxxxxx~.xxx instead of XXXXXXXX.XXX. :toast:

[eXceededgoku]

The usual story, im running vista and have a watercooled 8800 but whats the point if you cant overclock it!?!

anyone know of a way to flash the bios without a floppy drive? I dont have one in my pc or access to one but an un overclocked card = booooooo!

ideas?

what bios tool are you going to use?

[klepp1214]

NiBitor is what i plan on using to edit the bios if thats what you mean. It'll be my first time doing it so if theres any pointers to be given...

[eXceededgoku]

I seriously recommend using ATItool 0.27 b1 first to ensure that your card can take the clocks and then modifying the bios afterwards with the clocks you know your card can do...

[klepp1214]

I seriously recommend using ATItool 0.27 b1 first to ensure that your card can take the clocks and then modifying the bios afterwards with the clocks you know your card can do...

Absolutely! BUT is some type of a rundown available? =)

basically edit/create the bios file with nbitor then flash it with xxx program which has to be put on a bootable cd since i dont have a floppy correct?

[eXceededgoku]

yeah, thats basically it :). I did the same sort of thing with my ati card today ;).

[klepp1214]

well wish me luck im gonna go for it!

[klepp1214]

ok guys, quick reply here if possible. Its probably asking for a bit of hand holding, but in this case (500 dollar card) Better safe than sorry!

Anyone care to give me the commands neccessary to flash from a cd? the wwalkthru i looked at says doing it from a bootable cd isnt recommended but its all i have.

Little help? =)

edit - booooo the boot cd i tried wouldnt boot anyhow! anyone who has actually done this from a cd care to chime in with some specifics? id <3 you forever!

[eXceededgoku]

if u run teh program it will tell you what to type...

[klepp1214]

success!! well sort of! i'm having a bit of an issue with vista's performance rating application, it keeps crashing on me for some reason (not sure if its related to the flash) but atleast I didnt kill my card! ended up using a bootable usb stick!

[Vulcan]

success!! well sort of! i'm having a bit of an issue with vista's performance rating application, it keeps crashing on me for some reason (not sure if its related to the flash) but atleast I didnt kill my card! ended up using a bootable usb stick!

Its a driver issue. Try using different drivers.

[klepp1214]

you nailed it! after doing some research turns out it most certainly is, makes me feel a ton better, so aside from 3dmark not reading my gpu speed or make properly (without adding a ton of gibberish symbols) i think i have a 100% perfect positive flash for my first time! Those issues may be normal or just due to using the free version as well. Didnt look beforehand so shame on me! nonetheless it went alot easier/smoother than I had expected! thanks for the input folks!

[Andrew LB]

Doesn't nTune overclock in Vista? I just installed it and it seems to be working fine for me. I'm running Vista Home Premium 32 bit.