I just got another Radeon 9700 Pro back from the guy on E-bay that sold me the first one that mysteriously stopped working about a week after I installed it (put the PowerMac Digital Audio computer to sleep instead of shutting down and it never woke up and would not boot with that card in but would boot with the old Rage 128 in it).
Well, I put this 9700 Pro in and it won't boot either. So either the guy sent me the same 9700 Pro back that didn't work before to only lose a few bucks shipping (instead of having to give me a new one) and just make me think he tried to do the right thing (so I don't give him a negative rating on E-bay) or there's something wrong with my PowerMac's video card slot (yet doesn't affect an older card like the Rage 128). I can't imagine how that could be, really and the not waking from sleep thing seems like it probably has something to do with THAT yet I can't think of a single thing that sleep mode could do to say the firmware that would keep it from working with ANY 9700 Pro. Plus when I got my 1.8GHz 7448 Newer Tech processor recently, it updated the firmware so it would work with that CPU so it seems like that would have erased over any funky firmware stuff (although maybe it just added to it instead of updating it all).
I tried the nvram reset thing with the old one when it quit working. I'm not sure what else I could have reset that would have made any difference. I've looked high and low on the Net for some similar occurrence with a PowerMac and have come up with NOTHING. It all seems crazy, but then I'm having issues with my new AppleTV units (two of them). They can't rent/buy anything or play any DRM content or access YouTube. Everything else on them works (non-DRM music and photo streaming). Apple has not been helpful at all thus far. It's all a bit frustrating. "It just works" just isn't true for me.
So I guess I can either try ordering something else (say a Radeon 7500) just to see if it'll work (i.e. test graphics slot with something not so expensive) or just run Tiger and forget about Leopard (I get a ~100 user interface test rating under Tiger but only an 11 under Leopard on this system; I assumed this was due to the Rage 128 not being supported properly under Leopard. It feels too slow to use it on a daily basis. Tiger feels very 'snappy' by comparison, but I can't run any real 3D stuff there either. The Rage 128 has like zero 3D usefulness.
Well, I put this 9700 Pro in and it won't boot either. So either the guy sent me the same 9700 Pro back that didn't work before to only lose a few bucks shipping (instead of having to give me a new one) and just make me think he tried to do the right thing (so I don't give him a negative rating on E-bay) or there's something wrong with my PowerMac's video card slot (yet doesn't affect an older card like the Rage 128). I can't imagine how that could be, really and the not waking from sleep thing seems like it probably has something to do with THAT yet I can't think of a single thing that sleep mode could do to say the firmware that would keep it from working with ANY 9700 Pro. Plus when I got my 1.8GHz 7448 Newer Tech processor recently, it updated the firmware so it would work with that CPU so it seems like that would have erased over any funky firmware stuff (although maybe it just added to it instead of updating it all).
I tried the nvram reset thing with the old one when it quit working. I'm not sure what else I could have reset that would have made any difference. I've looked high and low on the Net for some similar occurrence with a PowerMac and have come up with NOTHING. It all seems crazy, but then I'm having issues with my new AppleTV units (two of them). They can't rent/buy anything or play any DRM content or access YouTube. Everything else on them works (non-DRM music and photo streaming). Apple has not been helpful at all thus far. It's all a bit frustrating. "It just works" just isn't true for me.
So I guess I can either try ordering something else (say a Radeon 7500) just to see if it'll work (i.e. test graphics slot with something not so expensive) or just run Tiger and forget about Leopard (I get a ~100 user interface test rating under Tiger but only an 11 under Leopard on this system; I assumed this was due to the Rage 128 not being supported properly under Leopard. It feels too slow to use it on a daily basis. Tiger feels very 'snappy' by comparison, but I can't run any real 3D stuff there either. The Rage 128 has like zero 3D usefulness.