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Trying to unlock an HD 6950

Cheesybox

Honorable
Mar 28, 2012
4
0
10,510
Hey everyone. Hoping someone here can explain to me what's not happening here.
Following this article: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159
I tried running winflash from windows, but when I try to flash the new BIOS in, I get an error saying "SubsystemIDs mismatch"
So I follow the extra steps (http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2134576&postcount=19) to get it to work. Problem is, I try to run atiwinflash with the commands afterwards, and nothing happens. The command prompt doesn't come up with any errors or anything, but nothing happens. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong/another way to flash the BIOS?

Thanks in advance
 
only the initial batch of 6950s could be unlocked. After a few weeks of that they started laser cutting them and they have not been unlockable since
 
Yeah it must be. I figured out that my typing was wrong.
Tried
"atiwinflash" -unlockrom 0
Got a message of "rom unlocked"
then
"atiwinflash" -f -p 0 unlock.bin
and got a message of "rom not unlocked" or something like that
 
Not sure what flavor HD6950 you have, but there are other ways to unlock a dual-BIOS reference card, including an 'unlock script' that is floating around.



 
Well, some still unlock, most won't. However, almost none at all will work using those directions. Those worked on the initial reference design.

Here is a guide I wrote early on, following steps I learned in the forum comments about that guide. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/316974-33-radeon-6950-shader-unlock-instructions#t2368661

There have been a few people who bricked their cards not following the directions well (mostly due to user error). I helped most get things back to normal, however. Read the whole thread for information if things go wrong. There was some trial and error on the recovery steps when things went wrong.