Atom-15 and HD 5450 2GB

[Jonny G]

Me again, sorry to post here regarding this but it looks like I missed the boat to register for Eiusdemmodi.

The HD 5450 I've bought is the ASUS 2GB model and when I try to flash it with Atom, I get the "not enough free space" error that I see some others have also experienced.

From reading a few other threads, I see it has been suggested that people try flashing a basic stock BIOS to the card, then mod and reflash that.

My question is this, is it likely that the 2GB nature of my card has made it impossible to flash and if I were to flash it with a stock BIOS, would I probably reduce it to 1GB?

[buttersoft]

There's another thread somewhere about this in which Calamity talks about an updated atom15 tool, one that is able to recognise free space in another manner. You might give that a read... I'm not sure if it'll help or not.

Wait, i found it: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=148991.0

[sean_sk]

My question is this, is it likely that the 2GB nature of my card has made it impossible to flash

Highly unlikely.

Try the updated ATOM-15 tool as suggested above, but I would definitely back-up your original BIOS before proceeding, which I'm sure you've already done.

Techpowerup have several BIOS's available for the 2GB version including generic AMD, but be cautious, since most of them are unverified.

As is stated in the warning on the ATOM-15 download page:

"Before you use this software, please make sure you understand the consequences of flashing a faulty or wrong BIOS to your video card. You WILL NOT be able to boot your system in order to restore the original BIOS. Usually you will need a PC which motherboard has TWO display card sockets and a second usable video card in order to be able to boot the system and flash the bricked display card back into its original state. Keep in mind that the motherboard's integrated GPU usually DO NOT serve this purpose because it's automatically disabled by the BIOS as soon as an AGP or PCI-e video card is plugged in. Always use the ORIGINAL BIOS image obtained from your physical card when using this program."

[Jonny G]

Thanks for the advice, yeah I've backed up my original BIOS.

It does look like Calamity has included the fix in the standard release of Atom now, as that version and the one I downloaded from his site are exactly the same size. I might have a play with Win Flash and see if I get different results.

[Calamity]

Thanks for the advice, yeah I've backed up my original BIOS.

It does look like Calamity has included the fix in the standard release of Atom now, as that version and the one I downloaded from his site are exactly the same size. I might have a play with Win Flash and see if I get different results.

No, it's not included yet. Try with the one posted by buttersoft. Anyway pm me the bios to check.

[Jonny G]

I found some time to test this issue out a bit further tonight.

The original Asus BIOS will not patch even with the other version of Atom15. It gives the same not enough space for hook error.

However, I found two potential replacement BIOS on TechPowerUp for the 5450 2GB model, an XFX and a Powercolor.

Both of these are patchable and display a clear picture on my CRT when tested with lbios. The issue now is that when trying to flash either of them back to the card, the SSID is reported as mismatched and so the flash is aborted.

If it's relevant the original SSIDs are Asus = 0473, XFX = 304B, PowerColor = 2291

I've tried loading both replacement BIOS into Notepad++ to see if I could just swap the codes out, but there were no matching strings.

Any ideas for a way around this please?

[Calamity]

You can force flashing by adding the -f option to the atiflash command line.

[Jonny G]

You can force flashing by adding the -f option to the atiflash command line.

Thanks for the info! Any danger in doing so? Or having proved that the bios works with lbios should it be OK?

[Calamity]

Thanks for the info! Any danger in doing so? Or having proved that the bios works with lbios should it be OK?

There's danger of bricking the card whenever you flash it.

Make sure you learn how to unbrick a card before playing with this and relax.

Did I send you a modded bios at some point? Did you test it already?

[Jonny G]

Yeah you sent me a modded bios but from the info you PM'd me with it, it sounded risky. I've since found someone with a dual PCIE board so am more inclined to give it a try now.

I'll let you know how it goes. Thing is I don't know if there's much point in doing it anymore as the Dell Optiplex I'm now using in my cab has a much more modern BIOS than the prev. mobo with a resolution of 1024x768 which obviously my CRT can't display. There doesn't seem to be a way reducing it either.

[Calamity]

How often do you enter the bios these days anyway?

[Jonny G]

As I'm sure you've gathered, I like to tinker.

Primarily though it was to stop me having an out of sync boot up. Looks bad.

[Calamity]

Primarily though it was to stop me having an out of sync boot up. Looks bad.

ATOM-15 will keep your boot at 15 kHz (Windows loading, etc.)

It's only inside UEFI configuration where it's supposedly going to be 1024x768.

[Jonny G]

Tried flashing the card with your custom bios but it gave an "incompatible PC image" error.

I then tried the XFX one and it seems to be working, so will give it a test and report back.

[Jonny G]

Well, only tried Bombjack but looks like the XFX donor bios has worked. I get 15khz on boot up. CRTemu-drivers install as per instructions and switchres seems to be doing its thing.