AGP Powermac Upgrade hack help

[speakerwizard]

Hi guys, i thought id ask for a little help here, ive been trying to flash a pc card for my g4 350mhz sawtooth powermac but gave up haha, i have now got an nvidia fx5200 64mb card from a G5 powermac, i saw this ... http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/FX5200_Mods_for_G4/FX5200_G4mods.html
which seemed fine until i looked at my agp slot and saw the small divider in one that would come in the middle of the longest bit (in the pic in link) but that tutorial doesnt mention this!, is this the difference between 2x and 4x? is there a work around? thanks in advance, i know you guys like a challenge
-Andy

 

[furious]

um my under standing is 2x 4x and 8x agp are all backwards compatible, why would you need to cut away any of the card

 

[Anonymous Freak]

While the speed parts are backward compatible, the voltages are not. If the card is 'keyed' one way, it uses 1.5 V. If it is 'keyed' the other way, it uses 3.3 V. There are 'universal' cards that have both keys, and can operate on either voltage. (They key on the card is an empty space between the 'fingers' on the connector, it will have one or two such spaces, depending on the voltage the card can operate on.)

Likewise, the AGP port on the motherboard is keyed for one voltage or the other, or both, if it can supply either voltage. (The key on a motherboard slot is a 'protrusion' in the slot that would prevent a card missing the 'gap' from inserting.)

1.5V was introduced with the AGP 2.0 specification, which is the one that defined 4x speed. So you won't see any 1.5V or 'universal' equipment that is before 4x speed. Most early 4x cards were 'universal' so they would be backward compatible with AGP 1.0's 3.3V, but some cards were NOT. They were 1.5V only, and would NOT work in an older board. I suspect that's what you are running in to.

DO NOT CUT THE CARD OR THE MOTHERBOARD! You will cause irreparable damage, because the card and motherboard are operating on different voltages.

 

[disconap]

Yeah, that doesn't look like an AGP card to me. I could be wrong, but I think that is PCI-express, which will not work in a Sawtooth. If I am wrong, refer to the above post, he/she sounds like they have more knowledge on the subject than I.

For flashing, check over at Strangedogs Forum (google it). I posted my trials and errors with dlashing a FX5200 256mb card, it might help.
I needed a PC to do mine, fyi.

 

[speakerwizard]

thanks ehurtley, so if i understand you, my agp slot has the 'protrusion' to avoid me putting in a card of different voltage!, which im guessing means the agp in the digital audop model in the tutorial i linked has a different agp socket (voltage).

I love macs but Bloody hell the graphics card options annoy me lol.

Thanks, guess ill end up buying yet another card now haha, 1st the pc one for flashing remotly, then a pci card so i could flash the pc one on same machine, then the wrong agp.

by the way if anyone is interested at all, im actually suping up the 350 agp powermac as a project, it has a 1.6 upgrade processor, dvd burner, 1 gig memory, 120 HD, extra usb / firewire, i thought the cpu upgrade would be the problem, boy was i wrong haha, cheers guys