Rage Fury MAXX

M

MageX

New member
I am seeking the unlikely.

That said, I'm looking for BIOS images for the Rage Fury MAXX. I have such a board with seemingly damaged BIOS contents. It may be just one is damaged, but I'd rather reflash both. The card was subjected to being flashed for use in a Mac, and I'm trying to restore it for potential use in a Windows 98 system (if only as a backup for the GeForce4 MX which is in it, now).
 
I ... have a Rage Fury MAXX. I don't know if I have enough hardware to put together an AGP system to pull the BIOS. If you are still out of luck, let me know. I certainly wouldn't mind trying.

What can I use to dump the BIOS?
 
Last edited:
Don't hurt yourself in the process, but it would be great if you could do that. As I recall, from the last time I was checking it out, the flash program saw 2 cards. So, to be safe, a copy of the BIOS from each would be best. I intend to add something to my personal web site which has the images available, just in case anyone else needs them in the future.

It shouldn't take much of a system to pull the images. An AGP board, of course. A CPU with heatsink/fan, obviously. A pitiful amount of RAM. A floppy drive. A bootable floppy with the flash program and space for ~128KB of ROM images. Of course, a working MAXX card, too. Add keyboard and a display (even just temporary). From there, it's a matter of booting up, issuing a couple save ROM image commands, and then posting the resulting files someplace (on this site, or something).

I will say "thank you, very much" in advance. I know I spent a lot of time trying to locate the BIOS images, only to come up empty. If nothing else, I will be very happy to have this as a done deal, even if the card sits in an anti-static bag for many years.
 
Gotcha. I'm more than willing to do this for the preservation factor. I'm lacking a hard drive and floppy drive. A floppy drive I might be able to emulate, but I'm going to have to figure something out about a hard drive. Maybe boot something from a USB drive.

Edit: I have an Athlon T-Bird system booting now, the MAXX is working too. Just gotta track down a hard drive. The mobo has 2 sata ports, but the controller is too old to recognize my spare SSD I think. There are no relevant BIOS updates.
 
Last edited:
In theory, if the BIOS supports booting from USB, that should be plenty. I didn't even think about putting a hard drive on something slapped together for just pulling ROM images off of a video card. I may go looking for or possibly make a boot image for a 128MB USB flash drive that I have. Not much else that could be used for, these days.
 
I was trying Win XP to start with, it has a common BSOD when booting off a USB Drive. I have it installed on a USB drive, but I get the BSOD upon booting. I've tried the NTDETECT.COM fix but it still happens. I believe I need the legacy IDE option enabled in the BIOS, but this motherboard doesn't have it (MSI K7N2G).

I'll see if I can scrounge up a different motherboard tomorrow, or get a HDD from a friend.
 
Last edited:
Not a fan of DOS, I take it. I guess I'm showing my age when I was assuming a simple DOS boot would be sufficient. I'm not even sure that using an NT-based OS would have the 2nd ROM available for reading. Maybe it does, though. I just know there is an entire thread about how you have to disable the half of the board for it to work under anything NT-based.

http://www.howtogeek.com/136987/how-to-create-a-bootable-dos-usb-drive/

There's just one example of the options out there.
 
The motherboard I was using just fried itself lol. Spark and a puff of smoke. All I have left for AGP boards require SDRAM, which I have none of. Project delayed! I hope the MAXX is OK :(
 
I've been through that, myself. No damage of any kind, board sitting in an anti-static bag for years, and while booting it up, it goes bad. Oddly, I have an old PR440FX (dual Pentium Pro board, pre-SDRAM) that still works, despite being abused quite a bit (not always kept in an anti-static bag). It's almost like some hardware actually has something built-in to terminate functionality after a certain amount of time (not necessarily the amount of use).

Delay is fine. I gave up looking a couple years ago. I decided to go looking again and found the situation was the same. I'm not alone in my search for the BIOS images, but nobody seems to keep them available. So, a little more time will be fine, and I fully intend to have the ROM images stored where they remain available and can be found via web search.
 
It seems the 2nd BIOS on my MAXX is still good, but I suspect the BIOS contents are supposed to be different. I mean, with 2 different numbers on the labels stuck to the flash ROMs, it pretty much confirms the different content suspicion. Still, to be safe, I'll want the matched set to flash.
 
I also have a MAXX in the garage, and probably a machine to boot it in.. Won't be able to get around to it till this weekend, but should be able to pull those BIOSes.
 
This weekend would be fine. Whenever is convenient, really. I've seen others wanting BIOS images and never find them posted someplace, so I needed to post the request for them when I got a card that needs to be reflashed. I will ensure the BIOS images stay available once I get them, though.

That's the luxury of running my own server. I can host whatever I like without some admin deciding to remove it on me. I am the admin. With the images being for such an old product, I seriously doubt that AMD/ATI will send any legal documents ordering me to take the data down. The product is abandoned. So, I would say that any copyrights on the BIOS code are essentially void.
 
So, I suspect another "can't do it" struck again. I think I'm just going to give up on this MAXX card.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top