Acer MXM BIOS Mods and discussion (was: x920G vs. 9600M GT)

[konstantin77]

@konstantin77: There are several possible reasons:
-The card is broken.
-It has a nonstandard VBIOS.
-You may have flashed a wrong BIOS, or the flashing could have failed behind your back. (Can you boot with no MXM card plugged in?)

Nop, not booting. But it was not booting with the old card and the old bios aswell.

[avati]

@konstantin77: There are several possible reasons:
-The card is broken.
-It has a nonstandard VBIOS.
-You may have flashed a wrong BIOS, or the flashing could have failed behind your back. (Can you boot with no MXM card plugged in?)

@avati: Likely the Nvidia flasher is not really reflashing the card. Make sure you add "-4 -5 -6" to the flasher's command line to override ID checks (otherwise nvflash will check against the IDs stored in the current BIOS, and will reject all correct/working VBIOSes).

Modified one of the bioses found on techpower(subvendor id board id), now works great. Thanks anyway.
Just a question, i know is Acer related topic, but i also have a 9600mgt on a LG R700 laptop. The vga card works with latest nvidia drivers, but i cant run it on full clocks, with the original bios. I have to modify the vbios to have the throttle mode the same clocks with extra mode. But i dont want that. Also from the moment i installed the 9600m gt on my laptop the external vga monitor and my Hdmi, disabled. I know that all that can be fixed if i modify the SBIOS. Will you guide me how to do that??? Please help me???

[.NetRolller 3D]

@konstantin77: If it doesn't boot behind the blank screen with the MXM card removed, then your motherboard is shot; or maybe the BIOS flash went wrong. Try a crisis recovery disk.

@avati: Post your original SBIOS here. I'll take a look at it.

[niffcreature]

.Netroller, can I ask how you determine the location and which way to solder the EEPROM on cards without one? And which pin needs the resistor...

Also could I possibly have links to your gt 230m and gts 360m vBIOS again?

Thanks!

[.NetRolller 3D]

Look for an 8-pin SOIC header, where one of the corner pins is shorted to the pin right next to it. That corner pin is Vcc, and the short pin next to it is HOLD#.
On the other side of HOLD#, there is the SCLK pin. The resistor you are looking for should be between SCLK and GND or SCLK and Vcc. Measure the value of this resistor, and add 20kOhm. If the result is around 40kOhm, then add a further 5kOhm to get 45kOhm. This is the value of the resistor you need to use as the replacement.
(If you don't understand the part about the pins - check the MX25L512's datasheet.)

The VBIOSes:
GT 230M
GT 330M
GT 330M alternative, fixes black screen in the Acer 5930G (also usable for the 230M, but will overclock it to 330M speeds)
GTS 360M modded to MXM 2.1

[avati]

@konstantin77: If it doesn't boot behind the blank screen with the MXM card removed, then your motherboard is shot; or maybe the BIOS flash went wrong. Try a crisis recovery disk.

@avati: Post your original SBIOS here. I'll take a look at it.

Hmmm i dont know what is the Sbios(sbios= rom on the bios chip?), so i backed up my rom on bios chip. If you fix my issue sir, i willing to donate you.
Thank you in advance.

[.NetRolller 3D]

SBIOS = System BIOS.

Do not post a backup saved from your ROM chip; link to the official BIOS image on LG's site. A backup may contain serial numbers or otherwise be unusable for other R700 owners.

[jimmyjimmy]

That suggests that there are further problems with ACPI.

I'll try to get access to a 9920G to find this out. Especially the Linux part (Linux's ACPI implementation is open-source, and hence debuggable).

Don't know if its any help at all, but just in case, I tried to install Fedora V16 on my 9920g (with the 9300M GS) and got a fail with the following error message:

[ 1.786087] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Register 0x00004030 not found in PLL limits table

[avati]

SBIOS = System BIOS.

Do not post a backup saved from your ROM chip; link to the official BIOS image on LG's site. A backup may contain serial numbers or otherwise be unusable for other R700 owners.

LG doesnt support bios download. You have to send your laptop to LG service center to update your bios.
If you have a problem with that, just check msi's gx700 megabook bios.
MSI Global ? Notebook - GX700
It is the same laptop(LG r700 is a barebone of msi's gx700 performance edition).I don't have problem if you modify that, because i already flashed it, in the past and works perfectly.
You can use my LG bios for others as well. I know that it can be used for other LG's laptops to(tested with friends LG). I dont have problem with that, because it is a discontinued product and LG doesnt provide support for it anymore. So you can go for it,please...

[.NetRolller 3D]

I'll mod the GX700 BIOS later.

The reason why your BIOS is unusable is not warranty - it is that it contains information about your r700's exact hardware configuration. It will likely brick any r700 with an even slightly different hardware setup.