Your Radeon 3870 came in broken? Maybe all hope isn't lost!

Hello everyone, I thought I'd share my latest Alienware-related story, maybe it'll help someone.

So, my old Radeon 3870 died (by my fault, don't ask) and recently I've bought a used Radeon 3870 for my Area-51 m15x. After waiting 45 days, it finally came. Not long after that, I discovered it wasn't working. It was a Slave card from a M17 R1 so I expected a challenge from the start, I just wasn't imagining the size of it.

First I just put it in, fingers crossed, and prayed that by some chance it would work. As you can expect, it didn't. The computer booted on the USB stick but with a blank screen; typical symptom of a slave card.
Next, I scoured this forum searching for a master bios (I wasn't bright enough to dump it before my old card died) and the procedure for blind-flashing. After everything was set, I began flashing the card, but I couldn't get it to dump the old bios no matter what. I was beginning to fear the worst. I reseated the card a few times just to be sure, tried different commands with atiflash, no dice.
Desperate, I pulled it out and took a closer look to see if anything looks suspicious and would prove the vendor's fault but I didn't want to wait another 45 days to get my money back.

While examining the card, I saw or rather didn't see something. A small diode labeled D3 was missing. It's on the backside of the card in the upper right corner while holding the card connector down. The fact that there's no component in some place happens all the time with electronics, but here the solder wasn't all shiny and looked a bit broken off. It wouldn't surprise me that it broke off in storage if they didn't keep the cards in individual bags, it's really on the edge of the card.

Thankfully, I have kept the dead card. Upon comparison, I found out that there should be a diode in that place. So I took out my soldering iron and swapped the diode. A little hot glue on top just to be sure and it was all done.

Finally, I put it into the computer and ran atiflash, imagine my joy when I was able to dump successfully! After the flash, it works beautifully, Borderlands 2 runs great!

I hope this helps

 

Did you buy from ebay or another site?

 

Yup, eBay... Picked up the cheapest I could find, it came from China so I was aware of the risks involved.