280m mxm 2.1 SLI vbios/driver hack with no cable (Area 51 M17x dual GTX280M project thread)

Well gents after about two years of speculations, questions, and a lot of unanswered questions I’ve finally manned up and decided to take the plunge and attempt to upgrade my Area 51 M17x to dual GTX280m’s from dual 9800m gt’s

First, I’ve read in many threads and have been told by a lot of people that the Area 51 M17x could run one GTX 280m but the ability to run a second GTX280m was impossible and that the GTX280m in 2.1 MXM was never offered in SLI. True the GTX280m was never offered in SLI for the 2.1 MXM format with the connector that enables the use of a SLI bridge. I tested my 9800m gt’s without the bridge and received a 1 FPS drop in three games that I tested and the SLI visual Indicator still showed that SLI was still working, so I’ve deduced that I’ll be able to run SLI minus the SLI bridge IF the GTX280m’s work.

When I got home from work yesterday I was presented with a box with two GTX280m’s, the fun begins. I applied arctic freeze to the GPU, installed new thermal pads to the GPU, and transferred over the fans from the 9800m gt’s, took a deep breath, physically installed the cards into the Area 51 M17x and turned her on.

The computer recognized both cards, I installed the newest 266.xx drivers, re-started and viola 2 new GTX280m’s recognized by the old girl!!!!!!

Now here are the problems I have to work through:

The cards I have do not have SLI enabled due to the fact that they are not meant to be SLI because they do not have the SLI foot for the SLI bridge. Im thinking that if I flash BIO’s from a SLI GTX280m that SLI will be enabled. I know that right now SLI isn’t enabled because SLI isn’t an option in the NVIDIA control panel, and GPUz says that SLI is disabled. However, GPUz indicates that both cards are running, and have the newest driver installed. So gents who can point me in the right way to flash bios to a GPU?

Second problem, might be big, might not, you guys tell me. My fans wont come on! Yes it’s a problem because as we know GPUs need cooling. But is this a common thing when upgrading cards? I downloaded NiBitor and tried to get to the fan controls but the boxes are grayed out and I can’t adjust the settings. So who has advice on how to get my fans up and running again?

More to come. Advice welcomed and needed!

 

I would ask Martin to see if he can add fan control for your notebook with his software:
HWiNFO and HWiNFO32 Forum • Index page

He has done it for other notebooks.

Also you might ask for a bios mod over at Bios Mods -The Best BIOS Update and Modification Source

Or you could ask kizwan:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/480992-acer-laptop-phoenix-bios-bios-mod-request.html

Or you could connect your fans to 5v from a USB port.

 

Congrats and please keep us update on your progress. I do not think it is common for the the GPU fans to not come on when upgrading, but I am no expert. God Bless

 

Hey Jdelna thanks for checking in. What BIOs are using for your card? IS it one that has SLI enabled, yes I remember that you are running one card

 

Well Ive been all over the net today researching fan controls and trying to find the correct BIOs with SLI to download and flash.

katalin on here told me not to flash a 3.0 MXM GTX280m BIOs to my 2.1 MXM BIOs. Is that just a concern for the greater voltage that 3.0 can deliver? Cant I just go and undervolt once I flash the BIOs?

 

I don't think it's a voltage problem. You will either brick the card or it will work. If you try flashing the mxm 3.0 vbios, do it to one card at a time, just to be safe. I don't think anyone has tried it before.

 

I would deff try one card at a time. I think I might try to flash a 9800m GTX SLI BIOs on it. Same G92 chip set, what do you guys think?

 

I didn't know that there was a difference between a normal bios and an SLI bios.

 

Ok need some help. Not even focused on sli at this moment.
My gpu fans wont come on! I've tried all the programs to manually control the.fans but the sliders are grayed out. In the nvidia performance control pannel neither automatic nor manual is checked for fan speed, and the boxes are grey so I can't check them. HELP!

 

Do the fans work if you have only a single 280m installed?

Did you try flashing the 9800m GTX vbios onto a card? That should fix the fan problem. Though you may get other problems.

 

I havent tried to flash a card yet. I got home late and tried to see if I could get one of the fan programs to turn my fans on. Im thinking I need to re-flash the cards anyway to get my fans back. Im not sure why they'd be de-activated. Fans do not work if one or both GPU's are in.

 

Here is what Im going to do tonight. Im going to attempt to flash a standard GTX280m MXM 2.1 BIOS and see if I get my fans back. Not sure why the fans arent active and of course I cant get a hold of the seller!! Im also going to flash the other GPU to 9800m GTX BIOS, see if it restores SLI and my fans. Than hopefully I ahve time to run some benches and comparisons.

 

Good luck. I'd honestly say not to flash it to 9800 BIOS. Theres a 90% chance youll brick it.

 

Actually, guy think this might work in my M9750? I need a new card, and its MXM2.1 slot. It'll be better than the 3870 I was going to put in.

 

Well I pluged back in my 9800m gt so that I can download the required drivers, bios etc. Funny thing I cant adjust fan speeds using afterburner, EVGA Prescion etc. What gives?

 

That's normal, those programs only work for desktops. The fans in your notebook are controlled a different way.

HWinfo32 would be your best chance to change the fan speed with software.

 

So I tried to flash and guess what the cards wont flash! They still work, they aren't bricks, and no matter what program I try I can't get the fan to kick on. Ideas?

 

What do you mean they wont flash?

Did you make a dos bootable USB and flash with nvflash?

What was the error?

You should use the command:
nvflash -4 -5 -6 bios.rom

If you have both cards in there, I think you have to index them, should be written in the nvflash read me file.

"nvflash -4 -5 -6 -i0 newbios.rom" (Forced BIOS Flash #1 Card)
"nvflash -4 -5 -6 -i1 newbios.rom" (Forced BIOS Flash #2 Card)

 

Like moral said, how'd you flash? I flashed my 7950's recently.

 

I was trying to flash one card at a time. I followed the direction to the "T" as indicated from this link, I made sure that I had the cards BIOS on the main part of the flash drive along with nvflash and CWSDPMI.exe :

http://www.bjorn3d.com/articles/Boo...U_BIOS_Recovering_from_a_Bad_Flash/1844.html#
I tried a GTX280m MXM 2.1 stock VBIOS and a 9800m GTX VBIOS and both times the cards stayed as prior to the "flash".

The cards still boots up with the VBIOS that it came with AND NO FANS. Which leads me to my second problem.

Ive tried After Burner, EVGA Prescion, and HWinfo32 with no luck. In Afterburner and the EVGA Prescion the slider bar for the fans are grayed out. HWinfo32 just shows me the status of my GPU and CPU, I dont see anything that lets me adjust fans. Anyone have any ideas? Moral Hazard could shine a light on how to use HWinfo32?

Thanks guys.

 

What output did you get after you used the command to flash the GPU?

And what command did you use?

You have to use the one I wrote in my post to force it to flash:
nvflash -4 -5 -6 bios.rom

If you have both cards in there, I think you have to index them, should be written in the nvflash read me file.

"nvflash -4 -5 -6 -i0 newbios.rom" (Forced BIOS Flash #1 Card)
"nvflash -4 -5 -6 -i1 newbios.rom" (Forced BIOS Flash #2 Card)

The "-4 -5 -6" options are important, the bios will not flash without those.


For fan control see this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/557441-m15x-m17x-r2-fan-control.html

You may need to contact Mumak and ask him to add support for your notebook.

 

Moral, thanks for the continued help. I used -p -u -f as shown in the thread I linked.

This is exactly what I typed: nvflash -p -u -f gtx280m.rom

Im not sure what you mean by output, sorry Im not as savy as it might appear. Im just good at follwing directions.

What thread of yours are you refering to?

Thanks for the fan link, checking on it now.

 

After looking at JDELUNA's thread again it appears that he is running the same BIOS as me but the 182.xx series of drivers. Could the newest 266.xx drivers be causing the fan issue?

 

usmc i just remembered you asked for the 280m BIOS and pointed you to the legacy subforum as they were the MXM 2.1
Was just curious if you got what you wanted and sawe this thread.

To be able to use the fans with those cards you need them to be supported by the BIOS as they are not controlled by the cards (that's why you can't use any desktop fan controlling program).
Mumak (maker of HWinfo) might be able to implement manual fan control in HWinfo for the m15x. Supported systems should be able to see a small fan icon at the bottom of the Sensor window (press Sensor button and look for it,should be a small brown fan).
Flashing the MXM 2.1 cards to a MXM 3.0 BIOS is a risk as they don't have the same architecture. If you still want to flash something else on them(on your own risk) you'll have to force the flash as Moral stated.

If you don't have a bridge between the two cards you can still benefit of SLi but @ the bandwith of the PCIe of the motherboard, IF the cards are SLi ready. I'm not sure of the 280m 2.1 versions.

Now if i were you i would contact Mumak and get those fans to spin before you melt the cards. And see if you can run them in SLi.
If not then i think nVidia didn't want them to run as dual with the cooling at that time and later they figured out they can run together and came up with the 3.0 version.

 

Ive been thinking the same thing. But then why was JDELUNA able to get his fan going on his identical card?

 

I haven't looked into this(didn't had time) but i will as i'm a modding fan too

 

BIOS successfully flashed!!!! Cards are now reading as 9800 GTX's going to try a few things and report back.

 

SLI ENABLED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( 2 ) GTX 280m running with .7 volt but 600 clock running in SLI with a 9800GTXm BIOS flash!!! Now to work on fans. I keep having to stp when temps get around 85, due to no fans!!!

 

Nice! If you can get those fans running, holy..

 

Can someone school me in the ways of using Nibitor to set fans to what I want.
I want the fans on at 85c I dont care if the fans stay at 100% so I dont need to know all the fancy tuning, just how to make the changes stick. I mod the bios but it seems like im doing something wrong because the fans wont kick on at the desired temp i set.

 

nibitor will not have any use for controlling the fans on a notebook.

Your only real option is hwinfo32, did you talk to Mumak yet?

I'm not sure why the fans don't work now that you have flashed the 9800m GTX vbios onto the cards (bios should think you really have the 9800m GTX in there).

 

I did, thank you. I just need to get some info for him.

 

Last night was a productive night! Thanks to moral hazard I was able to succesfully re-flash the BIOS of my GTX280m's to 9800GTX's. The main reason behind that was to have SLI re-activated, and it worked. As indicated bt GPUZ the cards are still functioning with all the specs of a GTX280m card, for example all 128 shaders are still present, not the 116 that a real 9800gtx has.

Once I succesfully flashed the BIOS the first time I became a BIOS flashing machine and tested GTX280m MXM 3.0 BIOS and GTX260M MXM 2.1 BIOS. The GTX280m MXM 3.0 flash wouldnt even begin, I guess the card knew it wouldnt work. The GTX260m flash worked, and still had all of the GTX280m 128 shaders, all the clocks and voltage was a little lower, but alas no SLI. So for now Im staying with the 9800GTX flash.

Issue: No fans, which has me confused becasue MXM upgrade and JDELUNA on here have completed the is swap in an Area 51 M15x and the fans worked. Maybe I need to re-flash my motherboard? Oh boy, dont know if I want to do that. Im going to submit my info first to mumak and see if he can write a code for my system for his hwinfo32.

I also had screen flicker with an error code saying that the display driver recovered from a failure when running the 9800m gtx. Flicker isnt there with the 260 or stock 280 flash.

Getting closer.

 

This is driver related! We used to get it in the m17x R1. Try to uninstall your current drivers. Reboot in Safe Mode and run CCleaner and cleanin your registry of any remainders of the old driver. Reboot and install another version.

Also for the fan issue, did you try to do a power drain?
Remove your power cord.
Remove your battery.
Remove the CMOS battery and press the power button for ~20 seconds.
This should be done on systems when you replace parts. It will also clear your custom BIOS settings so don't forget to change them back if you changed anything (RAID, USB options etc.)

I think this will work if the cards are initially supported by the machine and the new 280ms are recognised as mobile 9800GTX.

 

Thanks Katalin Ill give it a wirl. I might have to wait until tomorrow though, my girl needs some attention. Im actually enjoying this, proving that the old Area 51 M17x can do alot more than expected.

 

I'm getting an m17x like you.
I have some older 3700m and a few different versions so I will try the 9800m GTX vBIOS on them.
Maybe the Lenovo version will be error free with the 9800m GTX vBIOS, and it is a better card, you could have a beast that rivals the Dell m17x r1

I know I could find that 9800m GTX vbios (may have downloaded it already) but can someone please link me?

Wait, by 'my girl' you didn't mean your laptop?!

 

Hahahah no not my Lap Top. Well my girl went to the gym after work so I had time to play. I first tackled the job of getting to the CMOS battery to see if I pulled the battery I could get the BIOS to reset and turn the fans back on. WOW AW did a nice job putting thhis thing together but man it was a b@tch to get to the battery. I just kept pulling parts off until I found it But now for the setback, I wasnt careful when I was disasembling and put a substantial kink in the ribbon cable that connects the touch pannel to the Mobo board, so it doesnt work and I cant turn the beast on!!!! Does anyone know where I can get a spare part? Alternate means of turning on the Lappy?

 

Ahw man,sorry to hear that.
On your ribbon you should have a reference number.
Post it here so we'll look for it and do the same googling the part number also count the cables it has, it's important!
Are you sure it's broken or just misseated?

Just fy: patiance is the key when dissasembling!!

 

Yes si, I need to practice more patience, some of th eactual pins on the ribbon apear to be a little messed up. I found a complete replacememt touch pannel for 35 bucks with ribbon, so It'll be a couple days before we can continue this little adventure.

 

Hey usmc, can you post the BIOS for the 280M MXM2.1? (if that is what these cards are)

 

Ok so I can manage to turn my system on and test a few things which leads me to this question. As stated I pulled the CMOS battery and still no fans???? Still having issues when the cards are flashed with a different BIOS. I keep getting the video dirvers recovered blah blah blah. LAst night I tried again to flash the GTX280m 3.0 MXM BIOS and it worked, to an extent. No black screen, pc boots up, but I cant get a driver to install, I get the NVIDIA cant find compatable hardware.

Why am I the only one having issues getting these fans going?

Any ideas gents? Im starting to get frustrated, espescialy when a 3700 card is working in a 9700!!!!

 

Force the drivers to install, pointing windows to the .inf file yourself.
Can you also try to flash your BIOS again (not the vBIOS),maybe something got corrupted

 

Will do!!!! Ill try the 9800m GTX, 260M, and stock. Might take a few days to try them all, heading to the field Wed.

Everything points that this "should" work. JDELUNA's M15x was screaming with just one down clocked 280.

Freakin' Keman has one running, if not too hot in his 9700. Im not as much as an expert as this project might elude. Just following whatever others have done. This no fan and driver thing is getting me stumped.

 

No no no. Don't go flashing random vBIOSes now. I was talking about your motherboard BIOS.

 

Its running great now! Try the 3700M BIOS? That works in mine. They are mechanically identical except the 280M is 55nm. Its know to work both ways.

 

Katalin, I havent flashed my mother board yet. Are there idiot proof directions on how to? Myhive still has the last update on it for me to download. It mentions support for my 9800m gt's so im not sure what good it would do, but hey I guess its a shot right? I already have a bootable USB obviously, what else do I need?

Thanks for the tip kevman but a non-sli card is really no good to me because a single 3700/280/9800m gtx < a 9800m gt in SLI as far as gaming performance goes.

 

Very true. Did you try those drivers?

 

Im still at work, I wont be able to try until atleast 8 tonight.

 

Sure thing. I have classes soon, and my thermal paste just got here. Ill update my 3700M temps soon.

 

Here is an update/synopsis of what is going on, so that new readers don’t have to go to page one. The Area 51 M17x is able to run SLI with out a SLI bridge. JDELUNA and MXM upgrade have proven that a GTX280m can run in the Area 51 M15 x so I figured that (2) should be able to run in the M17X with out issues.

I purchased two GTX280m’s in MXM 2.1 format and proceeded to try and get them running in the M17x. The system immediately recognized the cards and I successfully installed the latest 266.xx series of drivers on them. Right away I noticed two things, that the fans weren’t coming on, not even at idle, and as indicated by GPUZ and the Nvidia Control Panel SLI was disabled. Yes, the GTX280m In MXM 2.1 does not have a physical SLI connection, but I didn’t think that Nvidia would go through the hassle of writing a different code to disable it, I was wrong. So began the search on trying to find away to re-activate SLI. I accomplished this by flashing a 9800GTX VBIOS on to the cards. Instant SLI!!!!! The cards were recognized as 9800GTX but had the stats of a GTX280m like 128 shaders vice the 9800GTX’s 112. But a new problem has popped up, the video drivers keep crashing. Im thinking that the card doesn’t like to run as a 9800gtx which is why the drivers keep crashing, is this a valid assumption?

I tried a complete driver sweep to halt the driver crashing but no luck. I also unplugged the CMOS (big pain in the but) to clear the system BIOS, in hopes the fans would kick on, no luck there either.

The last thing that I’ve tried was flashing the GTX280m 3.0 BIOS to the card. I did this for two reasons, one it has a SLI profile on it and two I’m thinking maybe the card doesn’t like being flashed with the 9800gtx BIOS which is why the drivers are crashing.
I haven’t been able to install drivers yet. I tried once but I received the common compatible hardware not found error. The GPU got to 85c so I turned it off.

I wont be able to play around with the system until at least Sat when I come out of the field. If I can get it to turn on, I damaged a ribbon cable to turning it on is a chore. I have a replacement on the way.

I need help with: How to flash a mobo BIOS, any ideas on getting the fans on, and ideas on why the drivers didn’t take. Im hoping I can force them in with a modded INI file. We shall see.

Many thanks so far to Katalin 2003, JDELUNA, Moral Hazard, and niffcrerature for getting me through some issues so far. This will work!!