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Issues with XFX HD 4870 ZWFC on MacPro

S

SaldaVonSchwart

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 25, 2010
16
0
Portland, OR
Hi,

I apologize in advance if this has already been resolved, but I've been reading through the original 4870 thread and haven't been able to find an answer to my problem. So here it goes:

My system:
MacPro 2006 1,1.
16GB.
Snow Leopard 10.6.2

Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 206BW
Card I'm dealing with: XFX HD 4870 -- the ZWFC model (1GB)

The original story:
---------------------
If I tried booting into OS X with both the 4870 and the stock nvidia 7300 (to flash from os x) I would get a kernel panic. So, I ended up booting into DOS and using atiflash 3.7.9 to flash the card to the bios supplied by Cindori in his ROMS folder (ROMS/4870/XFX ZWFL & ZWFC/mac modified.rom)

The current status:
----------------------
1. After flashing, the card boots into OS X just fine. I do get the "power cable not connected..." warning, after the desktop is done loading though. I thought this only affected the ZWFL (I have ZWFC) but am I wrong?

2. This is the one thing I would consider an issue: Now, the card will barely run in Windows XP. I tried it both in my mac pro and on a regular Dell PC, both with WinXP and DOS. Basically the card glitches like crazy and you can barely see the image.

Since the card now at least runs in os x, I also tried reflashing with the same Cindori file but this time through his os x flash utility. Same deal. The card works on os x but glitches on windows/dos.

As far as I read, the mac netlists for the card basically leave the dos bios intact and just add the EFI support but I guess this might not be the case. So, any thoughts on the above? Should I be using a different file to flash?

Again, if someone already figured this out then I'm sorry for reposting.

Thanks!

I'm attaching the os x info for the card. I can also provide my card's original bios and the one I flashed to.
 

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you can try an OS that wasnt released 10 years ago.
you also never mentioned that the card worked in XP with original rom
 
Cindori said:
you can try an OS that wasnt released 10 years ago.
you also never mentioned that the card worked in XP with original rom
Click to expand...

Which is the 10-year old OS? DOS? if so, I flashed in DOS because:

1. I wasn't able to flash in os x with the original rom because OS X would not load at all (kernel panic) with the card (with original rom), regardless of whether I had the nvidia 7300 (that came with the mac pro) also hooked up or not.

Specifically, the kernel traps when this guy pops up:
com.apple.ATIRadeonX2000(6.0.6)@0x8d6e1000->0x8d83bfff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.6)@0x932000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.0)@0x961000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.0)@0x943000

2. Neither was I able to flash in XP (neither in my macPro nor a Dell desktop) because winflash merely zombies out.

On to the other comment, that I never mentioned whether it worked with the original rom. Yes, the card worked just fine on the DOS/Windows side with the original rom. As a matter of fact when I said it now glitches I mean specifically on the PC side shall we say... as in, I also plugged the card into the Dell PC and it glitches at the motherboard's bios and everything... regardless of Windows.

is it more clear now?

Thanks
 
strange

I have the same mac as you have and a 4870 which works perfectly in both XP (now Windows 7) and OSX. I flashed it with the Pipomolo method which is described in details on the main thread on 4870. Good luck.
 
Cindori said:
Xp is 10y old
Click to expand...

Ha! Yeah I guess you are right; DOS is like 28 at this point.... (don't quote me on that -- didn't check how old it was, just know it was around when I was born: 1982)

Anyways, so despite XP being old and whatnot, here's the facts again:

1. With the original/stock firmware, the card will run just fine in a Dell PC under XP and DOS. It will, however, crash os x on startup if I try booting up, even with the original nvidia 7300 that shipped with the macpro in a second slot. Actually, with just the 4870 inside the mac, I don't get any time of image at bootup or anything.

2. If I flash it under freeDOS on the macpro (using DOS via the nvidia) or on the Dell (using the 4870 itself), the flashing goes just fine and then I can take out the nvidia and the 4870 will run fine (so far) under os x but will glitch under Win/DOS, both in the macpro and the Dell. I am attaching a pic of the cute glitching.

. When flashing I'm always using the mod rom you supplied in a previous post. That is, from your mod folder, the ZWFC & ZWFL one. (because I have an ZWFC)

3. If I now try to reflash with the same mod rom using the os x ATI flashing tool, same deal: we are still at step 2.

4. If I try the Pipomolo method (with the original rom I dumped with GPU-z and the mod rom I've been using all along -- the one supplied by Cindori), the card will no longer run and so I'm back at step 2.


Cindori said:
Make sure you are using a rom of the same revision as your card
Click to expand...

Well, I'm pretty sure the glitching is rom-related. Thing is, I've been flashing to the rom file you provided for the ZWFC all this time. Others have reported that it worked for them, but it's clearly not working for me.

So how do I make sure that it's the same revision as the card I have?

Also, I'd give the Pipomolo method another try. Like I said, when trying this one out I technically extracted the EFI part from your ZWFC mac mod rom, so maybe it didn't make sense to use your already modded mac rom as the EFI source? If so, where do I get the right EFI part from?

Just for the record, I am a Junior in computer science and have also taken some computer engineering classes for the f of it. So what I'm saying is that I have no experience whatsoever with what we are dealing with here out of lack of information. But I know eeproms, fpgas, implementing bios functions with MUXes, etc... and I can obviously read assembly and C. So my other suggestion would be, if there's no easier way around it, that you tell me any design docs that I should look into. Because if I just dissasemble the rom I doubt I'll make any sense of it without any context.

Thanks!

PS: I'm attaching my original rom (RV770.bin), the Cindori rom I've been using (mac modified.rom) and 2 pics: one is the info that atiflash spits out when I flash under DOS. The other is the very cute glitching feature of the card after flashing (in this case, when booting from UBCD).

The pic of atiflash doesn't read particularly well, so in any case here's the info:
DID: 9440
ASIC: RV770/M98
FLASH: PM25LV010
ROM size: 20000
BIOS: 113-HD487AZWF92
 

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Hmmm... tbh that second picture of yours doesn't suggest a bad ROM to me, it suggests a bad piece of hardware. You may want to flash the original ROM back to it and if the problem persists in Windows then RMA it.
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
Hmmm... tbh that second picture of yours doesn't suggest a bad ROM to me, it suggests a bad piece of hardware. You may want to flash the original ROM back to it and if the problem persists in Windows then RMA it.
Click to expand...

I said this 3 times already but, with the original rom the card doesn't do this. It works just fine.

This only happens after the flashing and only in Windows and DOS.
 
ZWFC does not say anything, there is a bunch of different revisions 1.0, 2.0, 1.2 etc etc and all with different rom. make sure the rom you flash with is of the same Rev.
 
there is a alot of yapping going on in this thread

OBVIOUSLY you need to look at your original ROM and the ones written for the XFX 4870 ZWXX cards in a hex editor. ROM revision, etc is in early part of ROM, you will know pretty quickly if file is different.

If it is, you will need to use the pipomolo42 method and write a new one. It must be done properly or you will have a brick.

A computer type such as yourself should have no problem with this. My last computer class was in High School, followed by a Liberal Arts Education in TV Production. If I can figure out how to write the silly things, surely you can.

problem solved
 
The Rominator said:
there is a alot of yapping going on in this thread

OBVIOUSLY you need to look at your original ROM and the ones written for the XFX 4870 ZWXX cards in a hex editor. ROM revision, etc is in early part of ROM, you will know pretty quickly if file is different.

If it is, you will need to use the pipomolo42 method and write a new one. It must be done properly or you will have a brick.

A computer type such as yourself should have no problem with this. My last computer class was in High School, followed by a Liberal Arts Education in TV Production. If I can figure out how to write the silly things, surely you can.

problem solved
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude but am I getting the vibe that I'm being "annoying" with my questions?
 
Cindori said:
upload your original rom
Click to expand...

Ok guys... so.... here's the news: basically SUCCESS . . . FAIL . . .

so, first, the success:
-------------------------
after rominator told me that it should be as easy as:

1. grab my original PC rom
2. do the pipomolo method with EFI from that famous 4870.ROM on my original PC rom

I did exactly that and, obviously, ended up with the right modded bios for my card. After flashing this new rom, the card worked just fine in both os x and Windows.

So my two mistakes were:

1. trying to just flash the pre-made Cindori rom just because it was for a ZWFC, disregarding the version issue. When I checked the versions in the roms, like you said, they were different versions)

2. when trying the pipomolo method as a second alternative, I did use my original PC rom but still extracted the EFI part from this same Cindori modded rom.

So ok, my bad... and like I said after using the right roms the card seemed just fine. That's the success part.


Now, onto the failure S:
-----------------------------

Basically, after switching between os x and windows a few times, trying out games and other apps in both and whatnot, I decided to once again switch to windows and play a game for like 3hrs. 3hrs go by and everything is fine. Then I decided to switch back to os x. When windows was shutting down it froze and I had to shutdown the machine. Well... I turned it back on and ..... the card is dead.

I spent the next 2 hrs trying to make it work but nothing. The mac turns on, I hear the chime and the screen never gets any signal/input. I can turn the machine on and fidget as much as I want with the monitor cable but nothing. black screen. If I take the card out and put the original nvidia 7300 then the machine starts up just fine.

:(


So, it looks to me like the whole rom flashing issue is resolved at this point. And I want to say thanks to all you guys for helping me out.

As to what to do next, I don't know whether to consider the card dead and try going the RMA way at this point, or if anyone has any thoughts on this. I guess it could be flashing-related? but then again, it seems a bit odd that it did work just fine on both win and os x for like 4hrs total before dying.

So any thoughts are welcome.

Thanks again!

Cindori: in case you want to take a look here's my original PC rom and the one I flashed into the card and used until it died (I renamed them original and modded just to send them).
 

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Won't work, Cin

Cindori,

I tried your latest modified rom on an hd-487a-zwfc and it doesn't work - flies fine under XP, but power error shuts down the machine on the Mac OS side.

Suggestions? Anyone have a rom that works on the hd-487a-zwfc?
 
did I say it would work on your card?

it was tailor made for OP's card and ZWFC means nothing, there are several ZWFC versions, all with different rom compatabilites, if you read my post 8 posts up you would know that
 
making ati radeon 5870 for mac pro

Has anyone successfully flashed a PC 5870 to work in a 2008-2009 mac pro?
 
Cindori said:
that modded.rom is very bad,
you using that, I find it amazing the card even worked for a while.


Correct modified rom attached


if you still can boot osx with 7300+4870 then flash using my tool
if not 4870 can boot then try bootcd method
Click to expand...

Cindori, I tried your rom but it didn't work.

With your rom, the card behaves in the following way:

. In the mac, it does nothing. If it's the only card in the machine the machine chimes and after that sits there; the screen gets no signal.

. If I add the nvidia and boot with both cards, I get signal from the nvidia and can go to windows but if I try booting into os x it panics.

. On the Dell PC, the card works fine (so far, apparently).

Any thoughts?


By the way... at this point I made a few comparisons between your version of the modded, my version (the one you said was 'very bad') and the original rom that shipped with the card.

This is what I see so far:

.The original rom is
63732 bytes of data
48908 bytes free (some padding...)
15504 more bytes of data
2928 free bytes at the end

.My mod rom (the bad one) is:
63732 bytes for the "PC section"
264 bytes free (NOOP/spacer)
64148 bytes of what I assume to be the "EFI section"
2928 bytes left free at the end

.Your new mod rom is:
63732 bytes of "PC section"
264 bytes free (NOOP/spacer)
64660 bytes of what I assume to be the "EFI section"
2416 bytes left free at the end

the "PC sections" of both our mod roms differ from the original PC rom in the following way:

First, well the whole second chunk of data (the 15504 bytes) are either gone or mixed in with the "EFI section" or something...

Of the first 6372 bytes:
byte 469: the original is 0x80 and both yours and mine are 0x00 -> this is apparently from the python script.
byte 48105: the original and mine are 0xB8 and yours is 0xBA. No idea about this one.

Still, disassembly of the atom bios from the three roms' first 6372 bytes (original PC, your mod, my mod) shows exactly the same data and command tables...

For the "EFI section"... first off, we obviously have a size difference. Your's is 512 bytes longer.

As for specific byte differences.... there's a ton.

So anyways, let me know if you can think of anything else...
 
Did you make me a 4890????

Hey, Cindori.... so I was just going through the roms in hex again and... I think you might have used the wrong EFI? like the one for a 4890 instead of 4870?

First, there's the size difference I mentioned in the previous post. And now that I'm going through the files again, I found this at 0x0FAC0:

your rom: ATI Radeon HD 4890
0x(41 54 49 20 52 61 64 65 6F 6E 20 48 44 20 34 38 39 30)

my rom: ATI Radeon HD 4870
0x(41 54 49 20 52 61 64 65 6F 6E 20 48 44 20 34 38 37 30)

basically 0X39 vs 0X37

So now I'm thinking the size difference is also due to the EFI part you put in this rom being from a 4890.

At this point I'm going to ask... why is it that my mod rom was very bad? I did exactly what the pipomolo method said I should
 
lol you are right, I used 4890 EFI, good work on noticing that

your rom was bad because it only had one MCUC


i'll make a new rom in 3 min
 
Cindori said:
lol you are right, I used 4890 EFI, good work on noticing that

your rom was bad because it only had one MCUC


i'll make a new rom in 3 min
Click to expand...


Sweet! I'm waiting for that new rom .... :)

Now, besides the fact that you are making a new rom and that will most probably mean I'll be all set, I'd really like to understand more about the whole subject.

About the rom I screwed up for instance, can you tell me a bit more about how did I mess it up? I mean, it's obvious that I don't really know too much about the whole rom thing to start with. I just did what rominator told me: use the pipomolo42 instructions. So basically:
. I extracted the EFI part from that one 4870.ROM file that's been around in the original 4870 thread.
. Added the EFI at a certain position in my original PC rom
. Ran the phython script to re-align the new rom.

Now, the problem is that still I was just following instructions without knowing pretty much anything about the ATI rom structure nor the code inside it. With the atomdis I was able to disassemble the pc part of it and surely enough, it's a bunch of code in assembly for the eeprom they use in the card (which I'm not sure which one it is -- an Atmel maybe?)
I can partially understand the different functions in this code but still, without further knowledge of the architecture it's not super clear.

And you said my rom only had one MCUC. I have no idea what this is. Again, I think because I have no idea about ATI's architecture. And about the EFI side of things... is it a matter of reading the EFI spec on the EFI website or is it an ATI specific thing too? (I k now EFI is not ATI specific, but I mean if the EFI side of the card is an ATI specific thing in terms of implementation).

So as you can see, I have a lot of questions.... I don't know, if you can/want It'd be really cool if you give me a few pointers. I actually like doing all the work myself, only that I don't know where to start.

Thanks!
 
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