ECS p4m900t-m Boot issue with 9800GT

[slyshane]

I have a ecs p4m900t-m and with a Geforce 8500 it works great, I
upgraded to a 9800gt green edition and when I turn the computer on all
the fans start up, then slowly hum down then start back up, and repeat,
no post or video on the screen. The video card works in another PC. I
have also tried to change the PSU out with no luck. Any ideas?

[Paul]

It's a VIA chipset, so if I had to guess, there's some
incompatibility on the PCI Express standards revision.
(I.e. Chipset is Rev 1.0a, video card is some later revision that
doesn't work with it.)

I'm having a lot of trouble with my search engine, digging
up anything of interest. You can start here, with this recollection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_series#Compatibility_issue_with_PCI-E_1.0a

Note the similarities between 9800GT and 8800GT. Same G92 is listed.
So a 9800GT could have the same issue as 8800GT.

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=544&card2=575

A poster here, claims their slot is Rev 1.0a on the motherboard.
I doubt I could find a VIA web page that verifies this fact. That
is not VIA Technologies style :-(

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=144922.0

As far as I can recollect, GEN1 VESA BIOS were only floating
around for the 8800GT cards. I haven't heard of any great
trade in video card BIOS files for later cards. And there
is too much hardware specific info, to be just randomly moving
files around. (Back when I flashed my AGP card for example,
the video BIOS file also contained memory timing parameters,
such as the CAS spec of the memory chips. The right BIOS file
is needed, to set up the video card memory properly. That's why
I wouldn't just randomly force a video BIOS file in there.)

Another random observation you can check out, is the
claim ATI cards worked better in this regard, because
they would start communicating at PCI Express Rev 1.0 rates.
Whereas, the NVidia cards of that time, they started at Rev 2.0
rates, and any motherboard with broken auto-negotiation, would
not "survive to turn down the rate". And ends up in limbo.
But because I'm not getting any useful info from the search
engine, you'll have to carry on the search and dig out
those nuggets.

By the way - flash upgrading video cards is lots of fun. Back
when I did my AGP card, I had to buy a PCI video card and run
two video cards at the same time. The video card flasher would
upgrade the AGP card, while I watched the program interface using
the PCI video card. If you're flashing, you can't really count
on the card to work, while you're fixing it, and then having a second
video card helps. So I ended up with a crusty old PCI video card
as a spare. Good for my next video card flashing experiment.

You've already tried changing the PSU, which is why my answer
doesn't include that as a suggestion :-)

Just a guess,
Paul

[slyshane]

Thank you Paul, so you are saying basically buy a new motherboard ?

[Paul]

slyshane wrote:
> Thank you Paul, so you are saying basically buy a new motherboard ?
>
>

There's a good chance an ATI card would work.

There is also a chance a later model Nvidia card would work.

The 9800GT is similar enough to the 8800GT, to make it
an "unlucky choice" for you.

Now you know as much as I do.

The problem with changing the motherboard, is finding a
decent replacement, at this late stage in the game. You
might have to go Ebay, and no telling what you might find,
that will work with your processor.

*******

I looked for another motherboard using your chipset. This
one uses 8237S for the Southbridge (works properly with SATA II
hard drives). The "FAQ" entry, describes the problem.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?cat=FAQ&Model=P4VM900-SATA2

"Answer:

The NVIDIA 8800GT PCIE VGA card is GEN2 mode VGA card.
Unfortunately VIA chipset does not support GEN2 mode VGA card.
The only solution is to set 8800GT PCIE VGA card to GEN1 mode.
We have tested 8800GT PCIE VGA card. After flashing GEN1 mode
BIOS for 8800GT, it works fine on VIA chipset motherboard."

There is a VESA BIOS database here, and there are 146 entries for
9800 GT. Trouble is, there is no notation as to what features
are in the BIOS. I expect these are "GEN2", rather than "GEN1".
Some other sites I've been on years ago, they spelled out
what the BIOS had, in slightly more detail.

http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?page=1&architecture=&manufacturer=&model=9800+GT&interface=&memSize=0

So the keyword to look for is "GEN1 Mode" when you're Googling.

I can find these for flashing instructions:

"Put the BIOS file and flash utility on the USB root drive and run:
nvflash as01gen1.rom -4 -5 -6
"

"went to walmart and grabbed a 5500fx pci.
made a boot floppy
i had to type "nvflash --index=0 -4 -5 -6 8800gts.rom"
to get it to flash
"

There is a suggestion here, at some point they would start
using a BIOS on the video cards, that works.

http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_joomlaboard/Itemid,34/func,view/id,46735/catid,13/limit,10/limitstart,500/

There is the same sort of claim here.

http://forums.ocworkbench.com/showthread.php?t=89453

"The newer boards use revised G92 chips & these EcoIntelligence
versions use a Revised v1.1 G92-286-B1 chip backed by a very new Bios.
Like the ATI cards the 9800 EcoIntelligence initially start up as
a PCI-E 1.0 device, and then "expand" to higher modes if supported
by the host motherboard (this is right from the Techs themselves)."

The idea was, that I think Nvidia was supposed to copy the procedure
that the ATI BIOS were using, which is to start in GEN1 mode. If a
transition to GEN2 mode doesn't work, the board runs at GEN1 instead.

So again, your options are:

1) Find a GEN1 ROM for the 9800 GT you have.
Use NVFlash to update it. If you have a second video
card (like a low end PCI one for $50 like I got), then you
can view the screen while flash upgrading it.

The odds of this working, are well... the same odds of lots
of other flash experiments working. When I did it to my video
card, I didn't really care whether it survived or not :-)
I had a warm feeling when I got my flash ROM off the web, because
the memory timings were the same, and the update worked like a charm.
(I was converting a Macintosh video card, to run in a PC.
Needed some soldering too.)

2) Find a PCI Express card known to work with VIA. That would
be some other NVidia model, where you can find evidence it
works with a VIA motherboard. Or look into ATI cards featuring
the same success story. You would need to examine customer reviews
for other P4M900 based motherboards, and see what video cards they
got working.

3) Change motherboards. Newegg still lists some LGA775 boards.
You'd need to check the CPU Support chart on support.asus.com
for this "P5G41T-M LX PLUS" motherboard, to know whether your
CPU would work. One problem with the slot layout, is your
9800GT may cover the PCI slots. Naturally, you'll need to reactivate
any OEM OS installation you did (system builder installer CD).
Because you're changing the motherboard. I didn't have a problem
doing that on this machine I'm typing on (WinXP SP3 OEM install CD).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131794

http://support.asus.com/Cpusupport/List.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=P5G41T-M%20LX%20PLUS&p=1&s=22

HTH,
Paul