bios locked on 9550 ATI ? how to unlock?

[sweeper2]

I have a gigabyte 9550 Radeon 128MB..

I have read a few articles on flashing the bios for this card to a 9600 pro or xt depending on mem and speed. I have Hynix mem which is supported for using. I get through the flash process and it gets to the end and i get an error with about 5#'s and says unable to open file ?

using FlashRom and this code to flash after i do backup of bios

flashrom -f -p 0 "bios name".bin

[PC_Fanatic]

sweeper2,

Is the binary image in the same directory as the 'flashrom' command? It appears that the program can't find the image file. Also try enclosing the complete filename "bios name.bin" in quotes.

[sweeper2]

binary image ?? not sure what that is... sry... i will try using the quotes and see. Thanks for the response.

[evilphantomx]

how about .bin= .(bin)ary image ?
and unless you tried to do something strange the flashromfile and the bin should both be in A:\
this is good old DOS and remember that it does not support long file names....how many char. long is the bin's name?
try renameing the bin to NEW.Bin and see if that don't fix it.

DOS only supports file names up to 8 char. long
if indoubt do a dir command from the A prompt and see if it sees the bin

there are some issues with bootdisks made with winxp and winme also
get a win98se bootdisk and see if that helps also

[PC_Fanatic]

sweeper2,

In order to flash, you have to have an image file which the flash program uses to update the chip. This image file is written specifically for the chip you're going to flash. This is a binary image, which could be code, or data, or both.

The file probably has a .BIN extension. Put the file in the same directory as the 'flashrom' program. If necessary, rename it using 8 characters. Execute the 'flashrom' program with the necessary parameters, including the image file name.

If the newly flahed chip misbehaves, reflash the chip using the backup image file.

Good luck !

[king_of_sporks]

I have the same card, and tried to flash it. I know I performed all the steps correctly, but it still won't flash the BIOS because of a lock. I'm not sure how to deactivate it, trying to find out.