Radeon 9800 Pro 256: Adding the LM63 Chip

A newly wired capacitor and new transitor in a new location i added tonight.. After several hours of extremely fine point soldering i put the card in...

Same results. No overdrive tab and ATItool detects LM63 chip but still only displays 51/31 or 83/63.

There is one more capacitor that is not on this board that is on the XT board but right now i dont think there is much more i can do.

Ive already ripped several solderpads and traces off the PCB (which requires me to bypass them with a peice of wire).

I have my 9800XT out and i seriously have spent up to 30 minutes with a flashlight just staring at them, following traces to solder points, checking capacitor/resistor addresses...

Next week out of the way and winter breast soon approaching i should be able to draw a definitive conclusion to this riddle i have formed.

Until then...geek on

 

Thanks for the encouragement Adrian

A bit of Advancement(?) was made tonight. I noted another solder location not on the Radeon 256 car thats on the XT card. I placed a low level capacitor and while the temps were wrong, they were refreshing themselves (51/0) and they would occasionally change like 52/1 or 52/-1.

Incase anyone doesnt know and still is reading this thread, the temps X/Y is R360 temp/ LM63 temp.

Im going to try following where C1524 comes from and where it goes.

Edit: As predictedl, it is the SMB_DAT line which from my reading is the way the LM63 chip outputs data. There is another line, the SMB_CLK which i need to trace/follow and see what it does.

I still think there is something im missing that can be corrected. Im going to try the fan tachometer mod tonight and see if i can get the tachometer up and running.

-Snipp

 

The LM63 monitors two tempatures:

The first is a remote diode tempature probe inherant to the R360 core.

The second is an onboard tempature probe that measures its own tempature, regardless of an external one being connected.

 

Ive gathered this much so far: My main problems is not between the R360 probe and the LM63 chip, but inbetween the LM63 and the SMBus.

Measuring resistance and stuff i traced the SMBus and SM_CLK lines and found two unbridged capacitors. Checked with the reference XT board they are identical capacitors.

I started with .5 uF on both and that didnt work. I went up to 1.0 uF and same results. I went up to 2.2 and the LM63 chip was no longer detected.

This leads me to beleive that i have to go less than .5 uF. I will be talking with our electronics teacher here at our High School and see if i can barrow a capacitance meter so i can get a a better reading and make sure the temps are accurate.

I'll know its working cause the ATItool will be displaying a LIVE tempature for itself. While it may not accurately read out the R360 probe it will at least read what its own tempature is.

Winter break starts tomarrow!!! Ill have plenty of time so wish me luck and hopefully ill have some good news to report... im going to get tthis!!!

 

ATB!
I wouldnt have the guts to do this. So you're gonna make a write up on this.. That'd be so cool...

 

Well 9 months later.

So did it ever turn out to be a success?

 

I'm wondering if he got electrocuted or something.

Though, his idea is incredibly original and daring.

I hope you're still at it!!!

 

I hope he is to, as the info is golden if successful.

 

Wow last time i wrote was winter break last year? Wow... it really HAS been a long time. Ironically the person who restarted this thread posted on my birthday!

Okay well i'll do the write up sometime but i did get the tempature monitoring to work on Radeon 9800 Pro 256s with non-XT PCBs. Destroyed a card in the process and 2 of the three LM63 chips but eventually got it to work in ATITool with tempature monitoring, although i never got OverDrive to work, though that point is kind of moot isnt it?

Ill do a full write up and explaination (since i did most of the work over the summer). Its kind of late now that the 9X00 series cards are being outdone by X8X0 cards (i even have X850XTPE).

Edit: i had to make a new account cause the one i posted under password doesnt reset. And the email account i used to register stopped working. Maybe an admin could help me out?

Hope some will benifit from the information soon!

One more edit: I forgot i even did this but i was able to get fan control of the card via ATI tool. This too was done by the LM63 chip. I came to really apperciate that wounderufl little thing cause it did so much (monitor 2 tempatures and fan control/adjustment).

 

Woohoo the thread lives again.
I cant even get overdrive to work right on a xt board that had the lm63 chip and the r360 core, just temp and fanspeed control.

 

Really? I had a 9800 Pro 256 with an XT board that when flashed gave me overdrive... I have a feeling there is something else that needs to be done to getoverdrive engaged... Oh well, again it doesnt do much. 5% overclock which you can do far better on your own. Besides, i am not 100% sure on the accuracy of the fan control and tempature readout (although they seemed very accurate to me).

Edit: Since i dont have the 9800 Pro that i did the experiment on, could someone provide a high resolution scan of the front of a 9800 Pro 256 and the back of it? Must be the 16 chip version. Does ARP have something in archive? The ones i have are really messed up from all the work and trace-rerouting.

 

I have the 128 xt board card, Overdrive is there but it never kicks on, just drops my cards clock down when I turn it on. (off I'm at 412, on I'm at 399)