A little backstory...
I was trying to hook up my Sapphire HD3650 512M DDR2 Dual DVI AGP to an old Sony Trinitrom XBR CRT via s-video cable. The picture came up black and white and it was scrolling rapidly. I tried a different cable and hooked it up to my plasma tv instead. Same problem. I also have an older ATI x1600, so I installed it. Same problem. I did a little googling and found out this can be caused by the card being in PAL television standard on a NTSC TV. More googling and found out some ATI cards have a PAL/NTSC jumper on the board. Unfortunately, the version of the HD3650 I have does not have the jumper, but the ati x1600 does, and it was set to PAL. I switched it over to NTSC and installed it. Voila! It worked! A little more research and found some people edited thier BIOS from PAL to NTSC, maybe not specifically on the sapphire HD3650, but on other ATI cards. And after lots more research I could not find exactly how to do it.
In that process I found there are numerous bios editors including Radeon Bios Editor v1.28, RadEdit 1.1D, ComputerBase ATi BIOS-Editor(CBABE) 0.97 Beta, and RaBiT Bios Editor v2.2.
So first step I acquired the BIOS, actually 2. The first, the original off the card using GPU-Z, and the second, a newer one from this sites VGA Bios Collection.
First tool i tried was RBE. It loads both the original bios and the one from the VGA Bios Collection with no problems. But i didn't see an option anywhere to edit the TV standard. Maybe it is just not possible on this card, I don't know.
Second tool i tried was RadEdit1.1D. When I try to load either the original or the downloaded one I get the error "This is not a valid ATi BIOS (code 3). I found that strange since the original has never been edited and my card is functioning. Since I acquired the original with GPUz, I tried with ATI Flash instead. Same error. So I tried ATIWinFlash. When i started it, it said error reading ROM.
CBABE 0.97 Beta loads them with the error "The selected file is no compatible ATi HD 2000 / 3000 series BIOS file!
RaBit Bios Editor v2.2 gives the error "Check RaBit driver! Results may be incorrect". At least it loaded. But on the features page shows TV init mode as greyed out.
I find it strange that the editors, except RBE, either loaded the BIOS with a warning message, or gave an error message and didn't load. What is it about the Sapphire HD3650 512M DDR2 AGP Bios that the editor's doesn't think is valid?
This is the info from the original BIOS loaded in GPUz:
Name: ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series
GPU: RV635
Revision: N/A
Technology: 55nm
Die Size: 118 mm2
Release Date: Jan 23, 2008
Transistors: 378M
Bios Version: 010.088.000.028.000000 (11x-7E5204SA-004)
Device ID: 1002 - 9596
Subvend0r: ATI AIB (1787)
ROPs/TMUs: 4/8
Bus Interface: AGP 8x @ 8x
Shaders: 120 Unified
DirectX Support: 10.1/SM4.1
Pixel Fillrate: 2.9 GPixel/s
Texture Fillrate: 5.8 GTexel/s
Memory Type: DDR2
Bus Width: 128 Bit
Memory Size: 512MB
Bandwidth: 12.7 GB/s
Driver Version: atiumdag 8.951.0.0(Catalyst 12.3)/Win7 64
GPU Clock: 722 MHz Memory: 396 MHz Shader: N/A
Default Clock: 725 MHz Memory: 400 MHz Shader: N/A
ATI Crossfire: Disabled
Sorry for the lengthy description of my problem. I guess what I am looking for, is someone with experience with these tools and the Radeon HD3650 that can tell me why the editors don't like my BIOS, how to get around them not liking it, or another way to do the edit from PAL to NTSC.
My PC is a Multiboot system with Windows 7, Xubuntu 14, and OpenELEC 4. I use my 17" LCD monitor on Windows 7 and Xubuntu, and only want it on my TV when booting to OpenELEC. There might be a way to customize OpenELEC to force the HD3650 into NTSC mode, but I have zero idea how to go about that, and I would prefer a BIOS fix as a more permanent solution anyhow. I know I could save myself some trouble and buy a cheap HTPC device for like 100 dollars, but I really can't afford it atm.
Any help on this problem would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
I was trying to hook up my Sapphire HD3650 512M DDR2 Dual DVI AGP to an old Sony Trinitrom XBR CRT via s-video cable. The picture came up black and white and it was scrolling rapidly. I tried a different cable and hooked it up to my plasma tv instead. Same problem. I also have an older ATI x1600, so I installed it. Same problem. I did a little googling and found out this can be caused by the card being in PAL television standard on a NTSC TV. More googling and found out some ATI cards have a PAL/NTSC jumper on the board. Unfortunately, the version of the HD3650 I have does not have the jumper, but the ati x1600 does, and it was set to PAL. I switched it over to NTSC and installed it. Voila! It worked! A little more research and found some people edited thier BIOS from PAL to NTSC, maybe not specifically on the sapphire HD3650, but on other ATI cards. And after lots more research I could not find exactly how to do it.
In that process I found there are numerous bios editors including Radeon Bios Editor v1.28, RadEdit 1.1D, ComputerBase ATi BIOS-Editor(CBABE) 0.97 Beta, and RaBiT Bios Editor v2.2.
So first step I acquired the BIOS, actually 2. The first, the original off the card using GPU-Z, and the second, a newer one from this sites VGA Bios Collection.
First tool i tried was RBE. It loads both the original bios and the one from the VGA Bios Collection with no problems. But i didn't see an option anywhere to edit the TV standard. Maybe it is just not possible on this card, I don't know.
Second tool i tried was RadEdit1.1D. When I try to load either the original or the downloaded one I get the error "This is not a valid ATi BIOS (code 3). I found that strange since the original has never been edited and my card is functioning. Since I acquired the original with GPUz, I tried with ATI Flash instead. Same error. So I tried ATIWinFlash. When i started it, it said error reading ROM.
CBABE 0.97 Beta loads them with the error "The selected file is no compatible ATi HD 2000 / 3000 series BIOS file!
RaBit Bios Editor v2.2 gives the error "Check RaBit driver! Results may be incorrect". At least it loaded. But on the features page shows TV init mode as greyed out.
I find it strange that the editors, except RBE, either loaded the BIOS with a warning message, or gave an error message and didn't load. What is it about the Sapphire HD3650 512M DDR2 AGP Bios that the editor's doesn't think is valid?
This is the info from the original BIOS loaded in GPUz:
Name: ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series
GPU: RV635
Revision: N/A
Technology: 55nm
Die Size: 118 mm2
Release Date: Jan 23, 2008
Transistors: 378M
Bios Version: 010.088.000.028.000000 (11x-7E5204SA-004)
Device ID: 1002 - 9596
Subvend0r: ATI AIB (1787)
ROPs/TMUs: 4/8
Bus Interface: AGP 8x @ 8x
Shaders: 120 Unified
DirectX Support: 10.1/SM4.1
Pixel Fillrate: 2.9 GPixel/s
Texture Fillrate: 5.8 GTexel/s
Memory Type: DDR2
Bus Width: 128 Bit
Memory Size: 512MB
Bandwidth: 12.7 GB/s
Driver Version: atiumdag 8.951.0.0(Catalyst 12.3)/Win7 64
GPU Clock: 722 MHz Memory: 396 MHz Shader: N/A
Default Clock: 725 MHz Memory: 400 MHz Shader: N/A
ATI Crossfire: Disabled
Sorry for the lengthy description of my problem. I guess what I am looking for, is someone with experience with these tools and the Radeon HD3650 that can tell me why the editors don't like my BIOS, how to get around them not liking it, or another way to do the edit from PAL to NTSC.
My PC is a Multiboot system with Windows 7, Xubuntu 14, and OpenELEC 4. I use my 17" LCD monitor on Windows 7 and Xubuntu, and only want it on my TV when booting to OpenELEC. There might be a way to customize OpenELEC to force the HD3650 into NTSC mode, but I have zero idea how to go about that, and I would prefer a BIOS fix as a more permanent solution anyhow. I know I could save myself some trouble and buy a cheap HTPC device for like 100 dollars, but I really can't afford it atm.
Any help on this problem would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.