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7970 in G5
- Thread starter rabidz7
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How it that more important? It wont even function in a PPC mac, let alone play any games at all.
A 7970 can play any game you can imagine without lagging!!!!!
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Are ROMs compiled or assembled?
Who makes ROMs?
If ROMs are compiled or assembled, how difficult is it to decompile or disassemble one, compared to say, C++?
This thread is starting to look a lot like some of your previous threads. Just go back and read through those again.
Really? Like impossible and possibly against the law. Unless they release it, there's nothing, absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Regards,
All programs, whether written in C, C++, etc... are "assembled". All code compiled to assembly language. Even interpreted code gets translated to assembly. CPU's only understand assembly language, compiler and interpreters convert code to assembly.
Also each architecture (x86 / PPC / ARM / etc..) all have different assembly language.
Simple answer: If you have to ask, you don't have the skills to do the work yourself - and nobody else is going to do it for you.
If you had the skills to create a PPC-compatible firmware for it, then you would have the skills to answer the question yourself.
They are most probably written in C and compiled to x86 machine code. Disassembling the code is easy if you have a disassembler - there are plenty out there, just search for one. I use nasm.
To extract the ROM from the GPU you can use the following (on an x86 machine, obviously):
List PCI devices and their bus IDs:
Code:
$ lspci -nnEnable ROM access (where x is the ID from the previous step):
Code:
$ cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:00\:0x.0
# echo 1 > rom
Code:
# dd if=rom of=~/rom.bin
Code:
# cat rom > ~/rom.binDisable ROM access
Code:
# echo 0 > romNow you have your ROM, you need to take a look at the PCI expansion ROM spec (see here: http://www.pzk-agro.com/0321156307_ch23lev1sec7.html) and extract the x86 initialization code from it so you can disassemble it.
You may wish to use strings utility to print out any interesting ASCII strings it finds in the ROM (manufacturer, clocks etc.).
Once you have the code you need to figure out exactly how the device is initialized (there will be a lot of memory access and IO going on). Understanding this process is key. Once you understand how the device is initialized you will write a similar implementation and assemble it to PPC machine code, making sure it fits into the exact same memory map as before.
I have no idea how complex the initialization code is, but no doubt it's not simple. Given we don't have any open-source implementations of the Nvidia VBIOS, I'm guessing it's going to be incredibly tough.
Why even trying to install modern, fast video card to old slow and power hungry machine running obsolete (for most people) CPU type and then use OS which is far mofe optimized for x86 based, much faster, less power hungry and relatively cheaper systems?
The newest PowerPC game I can think of is Doom 3, which is easily playable on a 7800 at Max Settings.
So whats the point of this again?
It won't work.
