Hey guys I haven't posted here for a few years and although I know this is a 3dfx forum I was wondering if anyone could help me out with finding a bios update for a Sparkle FX 5700 LE 256 MB AGP card? All the links I have found on google are either dead links or just advertising spam. Any help would be greatly appreciated.  :)

A great place to look would probably be http://www.mvktech.net/ (huge bios/driver database) Search the "ReMOSitory" - http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,0/func,search/

Also search the forums and you might be able to find something, if not please let me know what version of the BIOS you currently have. (then I will know what version to look for.)  (also, if you can provide a filename of those broken links you found that could also help find a working link)

Out of curiosity, why are you attempting to update the BIOS on such a card?

Thanks for the info, I'm not entirely sure if it is the bios. The bios screen comes up and it basically hangs at a black screen. I was considering booting with a pci card and seeing if i could reflash it but it may be a hardware issue. It's just a card that's laying around and i recently acquired an abit board with an athlon 2600+. I thought I might be able to resurrect it. VGA cards seem to be harder to unbrick than other IT equipment. I guess I enjoy fixing things that are otherwise dead.  :)

OK!  ;D Success with flashing the card but the rom was a 128 mb rom. It worked perfectly however after reflashing back to the original rom I got the same problem. The 128 MB rom booted up fine and booted into my boot disk fine but I can't have it thinking it is a 128 MB card. The link you gave me didn't have any 256 MB roms unfortunately for the sparkle card. Perhaps I should use a generic nvidia rom for a 256 meg card?
The original bios is rev 4.36.20.30T2FV.  :)

Congrats! :)You could try AOpen Aeolus FX5700 LE 256MB BIOS...

http://www.mvktech.net/components/com_joomlaboard/uploaded/files/aOpen5700LE256.zip

Ok I tried the Aopen and also a gigabyte version and still getting the same issue. I'm wondering if the problem is accessing a faulty memory chip in the 128-256 bank? I might have to just stick with 128 meg.

Ok, if you are feeling up to it I customized the AOpen BIOS. (dropped the voltage and core/mem freq's a bit)

If you are feeling up to it. ( i take no responsibility ) Or you can always mod the bios yourself.

Here it is: http://www.filedropper.com/rotten

Rotten GeForce classic! HAHA! Same thing unfortunately I'm thinking there is a hardware memory issue going on here. I'll try the 128 MB rom again to see if it wasn't a fluke. Thanks for that rotten.rom  ;)

You're welcome.  Please let us know whatever comes of the card/bios situation.

I've always had a thing of customizing my BIOS... :)  Here is a pic of my old system from 2004. Being that it was liquid cooled I had a custom bios w/ higher voltage and faster ram/gpu timings.

http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/7888/imgp1631.jpg

Ok the 128 MB rom is confirmed as stable I don't know what to make of it.  :-/

Thanks heaps for your help at least I have a half usable card lol. I now have a good resource for roms! It would be nice to nail what the differences between the 128 and 256 are but not to worry. Maybe I should have tried that on my voodoo 4s I've ditched in the past.

Here is a photo of the card which I replaced the old heatsink fan assembly with one from a dead card-

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c298/quaddamage/102_3845.jpg

and a photo of the sparkle 128 rom

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c298/quaddamage/102_3846.jpg