ATI fireGL X3 NOS on ebay

[QSDP-User]

Flashed with PC but no joy

Got this card for my QS 2002 Dual 1 GHz.

Tested first in PC with 4X AGP - working OK.
Flashed in same PC as per posted instructions
(ATIFlash, FireGLX3 reduced ROM, MS-DOS boot floppy & PCI vid card output).

atiflash -i readout after flashing:
adapter | bn | dn | dID | asic | flash | rom size | test | bio p/n
0 01 00 4A4D R420/M18 M25P05/C 10000 pass -
NOTE: formatting gets skewed so I attached a screensnap of the text file
which was typed on TextEdit.
Original info was copied from the PC screen, hand-written onto paper.

Taped pins# 3 & 11
Installed vid card, QS boot chimes & drive LEDs active, but monitor black.
I then rebooted QS with monitor attached to a PCI vid card.
QS booted fine so looked at Apple System Profiler & only PCI vid card listed.
Nothing acknowledged at all with the AGP slot.

Perhaps I'm missing something the more experienced person can see.

Btw, I choose to flash vid cards with a PC because
once I bricked a $30 used PC vid card using the Mac version of flashing

So, another experience added to the mix, but somewhat hopeful something may pan out
(a working solution or resigned hardware enlightenment, LoL).

 

[eyoungren]

Well.

This morning was a comedy of good fortune.

1. Put FireGL card in PC. This is a Gateway Pentium 4 with 512mb ram.
2. Realized that the FireGL card is dual DVI. My monitor is VGA.
3. Searched through my stuff here at work with a hail Mary for a DVI<->VGA converter. Lo and behold, I had a second one!
4. Turn on the PC and the system immediately saw the card and booted into XP with video.
5. Some other minor stuff like installing Firefox so I could get online to download stuff.
6. Hey guess what? No one in the building uses floppies any more! So, let's go visit the safe where I know we have God knows what for really old PC apps and stuff and hello! There's two Pagemaker 6.5 update floppies. So, I snagged those because we don't need an updater to an app we have not used in well over 11 years!
7. Found harrymatic's Guide to Flashing SATA card thread and used his link to download a bootable Win98 disk.
8. Unzipped the ATI flash utility and the FireGL rom to the second disk.
9. Booted on the Win98 disk. Win 98 tells me there is no FAT32 drives which is irrelevant because I don't need the hard drive.
10. Followed ATI flash intructions, saw the AGP card, created a backup rom and then flashed!!!!

I got NO errors!

Rebooted PC and, voila, NO VIDEO!!!! So, I know the card has been flashed!

Tonight will be the test. Have to retape pins (for the third time now) and we will see what happens.

Right now I am very hopeful!

Here's my output from ATIFlash utility…

P.S. harrymatic, your card goes out in a few hours!

 

[catzilla]

Good luck with that! I flashed PCI graphics cards years ago but I don't remember using a PC.

 

[harrymatic]

That's certainly encouraging - I really hope it works!

 

[eyoungren]

Well, I'm calling this. At least for me.

Does. Not. Work. In. A. Quicksilver.

As QSDP-User notes, there is zero recognition that there is even a card in the slot.

So much for that. Maybe if I end up with a MDD or G5 at some point, but it's not going to work in a QS.

But, I want what I want. So, since my USB 2.0 card is not really being used right now, I pulled it and moved my two other cards down and put my 9800 back in.

Six displays!

Surprisingly enough there does not seem to be ANY artifacting by the 9800 Pro now. Very strange. However, it's still blocking SLOT 2, my first PCI port so ultimately I will have to figure out what I am going to do here.

 

[bunnspecial]

Too bad it's not working in the Quicksilver-I had high hopes for that!

As I mentioned earlier, I attempted to flash the card in my G5 and didn't think I was successful. I tried to install it in a work PC today, and the computer would not POST with the card installed...that makes me think I either bricked it or successfully flashed it. I tested it in my DA(my usual test bed for this stuff) after attempting the G5 flash and put the 6800 Ultra back in my G5(a card which is NOT coming out again if I can help it). The X3 is a pain to put in a G5, since you need to remove the optical drive(at least temporarily) to tap the power cable... fortunately at least the splitter that came packaged with the card leaves more than enough room to connect both the card and the optical drive.

I'll try the card tomorrow night in an MDD. They seem to be a bit friendlier to some of these cards-maybe I'll get lucky and it will work. Otherwise, I've just blown $40

It sounds like my "reconfigured" QS will have to stick with a 9600, which overall isn't a terrible thing.

 

[eyoungren]

Too bad it's not working in the Quicksilver-I had high hopes for that!

As I mentioned earlier, I attempted to flash the card in my G5 and didn't think I was successful. I tried to install it in a work PC today, and the computer would not POST with the card installed...that makes me think I either bricked it or successfully flashed it. I tested it in my DA(my usual test bed for this stuff) after attempting the G5 flash and put the 6800 Ultra back in my G5(a card which is NOT coming out again if I can help it). The X3 is a pain to put in a G5, since you need to remove the optical drive(at least temporarily) to tap the power cable... fortunately at least the splitter that came packaged with the card leaves more than enough room to connect both the card and the optical drive.

I'll try the card tomorrow night in an MDD. They seem to be a bit friendlier to some of these cards-maybe I'll get lucky and it will work. Otherwise, I've just blown $40

It sounds like my "reconfigured" QS will have to stick with a 9600, which overall isn't a terrible thing.

Well, I just shipped harrymatic his card today. If it does not work on your MDD then he's blown quite a fair bit more than us.

This makes twice for me now that I've gotten cards I thought I could flash. From now on, unless it says "Mac" in the auction I'm not buying.

Note, no offense to anyone, it's just that I'm not experienced enough at any of this so from now on I'd rather protect myself by buying things advertised for Mac.

I can't send this card back because the seller gave me exactly what his auction specified and the card worked in the short time I had it in the PC today.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I do Find this very strange... In my case I Literally Just unpacked it taped it Flashed it No fussing it was a walk in the park for me LOL Im wondering something, My card never did show up in the ASP but multiflasher saw it now i'm wondering eyoungren if now u have sort of flashed it in the PC maybe multi flasher will see it? this is New to me I have flashed a total of 5 cards 2 PCI sata cards a Radeon 9800 pro and a FireGL X3 and the R9800 and X3s flashing procedure was identical for me. also Make sure its not ur AGP slot thats slightly bit dirty or something.

 

[eyoungren]

I do Find this very strange... In my case I Literally Just unpacked it taped it Flashed it No fussing it was a walk in the park for me LOL Im wondering something, My card never did show up in the ASP but multiflasher saw it now i'm wondering eyoungren if now u have sort of flashed it in the PC maybe multi flasher will see it? this is New to me I have flashed a total of 5 cards 2 PCI sata cards a Radeon 9800 pro and a FireGL X3 and the R9800 and X3s flashing procedure was identical for me. also Make sure its not ur AGP slot thats slightly bit dirty or something.

I did not use Multiflasher to see if the card was visible after I flashed it on the PC. I did check Apple System Profiler to see if the card was there or not and it showed nothing in the slot.

I have a USB/FW400 card coming this week so I might double check while I have the case open.

However, at this point I've pretty much given up. I'm tired of opening up the case to switch out cards for no benefit.

As to a dirty AGP slot, I can see the possibility, but I'd have to ask then, why is my Radeon 9800 Pro AGP card working if the slot is dirty?

Three Quicksilver owners have reported that it's not working now. I'm not the only one. You mentioned that both you and harrymatic are using MDDs. I'm hopeful that that is the difference because it means I can still use the card in an MDD if this next test does not work.

Again, no one's fault here. I've just decided that from now on that I'm going to stick with Mac branded stuff.

 

[desantii]

Is there any difference in the AGP slots between the Quicksilver and MDD? I do remember one a 9600 that would not work in my QS but worked just fine in a MDD
Thanks

 

[QSDP-User]

I agree with eyoungren in saying it's no one's fault regarding the FireGLX3 not working in Quicksilvers.
The "water was to be tested" & now we have some results.

The PC that I used to flash the FireGLX is now using the FireGLX (flashed back to PC rom).
It replaced a mediocre HIS Radeon 9550/256 vram.

But what I had to go through to get the FireGLX to run in that old PC,
i.e., drivers & associated software....Oooh boy...
What a sit-com my life became...I felt like, OK now WTF's going on...What's next?
But now that that sit-com is in past syndication, I can laff my a$$ off thinking about it

Btw, the FireGLX3 is labeled a Workstation Graphics card, not Desktop.
I didn't know that so I was looking in the wrong drivers listing at AMD

I wish I knew the answer to desantii's question about any difference btwn QS & MDD's AGP slots.
It's all VooDoo to me like the old temperamental SCSI setups.

 

[eyoungren]

I agree with eyoungren in saying it's no one's fault regarding the FireGLX3 not working in Quicksilvers.
The "water was to be tested" & now we have some results.

The PC that I used to flash the FireGLX is now using the FireGLX (flashed back to PC rom).
It replaced a mediocre HIS Radeon 9550/256 vram.

But what I had to go through to get the FireGLX to run in that old PC,
i.e., drivers & associated software....Oooh boy...
What a sit-com my life became...I felt like, OK now WTF's going on...What's next?
But now that that sit-com is in past syndication, I can laff my a$$ off thinking about it

Btw, the FireGLX3 is labeled a Workstation Graphics card, not Desktop.
I didn't know that so I was looking in the wrong drivers listing at AMD

I wish I knew the answer to desantii's question about any difference btwn QS & MDD's AGP slots.
It's all VooDoo to me like the old temperamental SCSI setups.

Guess we will leave this up to harrymatic to see if it can be figured out.

Hopefully it won't take a bazillion years for him to get his card.

 

[harrymatic]

It may still be possible to get it going on Quicksilvers by fiddling with the timings, manufacturer/device IDs and other things in the ROM. I'll have an in-depth look once I get my card. Fortunately, unlike the SATA card escapade, a lot of the inner workings of ATI Mac firmware has already been worked out.

 

[bunnspecial]

No luck in an MDD(Specifics: MDD 2003, single 1.25, running Leopard)

 

[Surrat]

I wonder whats going on here...

The FireGL x3 is a known good card for flashing, thousands have been converted to x800 mac over the years.

Could it be the rom file you guys downloaded has errors in it somehow?

Are you using the exact same rom that Lightbulbfan used?

 

[QSDP-User]

I wonder whats going on here...

The FireGL x3 is a known good card for flashing, thousands have been converted to x800 mac over the years.

Could it be the rom file you guys downloaded has errors in it somehow?

Are you using the exact same rom that Lightbulbfan used?

Well, I used the Reduced ROM listing for the FireGLX3 which is the one I assumed Lightbulbfun mentioned.
(see attached image)

Hmmm... interesting, this "x800" conversion you speak of..
But then, I don't know about MDDs,
but I'm beginning to think of Quicksilvers as Quirkysilvers when it comes to flashing cards

 

[LightBulbFun]

ok in this attached Zip File is all the stuff I have that worked for me (it has the ATI ROM i used it has the PC ROM I dumped it has the Run me first I used and it also has the ATIMultiFlasher with the FireGL X3 mac ROM installed that I used)

 

[eyoungren]

I wonder whats going on here...

The FireGL x3 is a known good card for flashing, thousands have been converted to x800 mac over the years.

Could it be the rom file you guys downloaded has errors in it somehow?

Are you using the exact same rom that Lightbulbfan used?

Does ANY ROM make a difference if the QS does not SEE the AGP card even when it's stock with the PC ROM it shipped with?

The major problem here is that the AGP slot is NOT SEEING the card. It's not the ROM. You can't flash anything if the system doesn't detect anything to flash to!

For the record, I used the ROM harrymatic linked to. But that STILL does not explain why the QS won't even detect that there is a card in the AGP slot.

 

[bunnspecial]

Not sure what I was doing wrong before, but I'm happy to report that I did just successfully flash this card in my G5 and it's working perfectly.

Now, off to reinstall the 6800 Ultra, put the 9200 back in my B&W, tape the pins on the(now) X800 XT for about the 5th time, and try it(again) in my testbed Digital Audio.

 

[bunnspecial]

Still no luck with the(now) flashed and taped card in my DA. It's 2:00 in the morning here and I need to be at work at 8:00, so the QS and MDD tests are going to have to wait until tomorrow.

 

[desantii]

At least some partial good news!

 

[eyoungren]

I figured it would work in a G5. Just not the QS apparently.

 

[bunnspecial]

With a now successfully flashed card, I tried it in my Quicksilver and it was a no-go.

MDD report coming on Monday...(unless we get the predicted snowstorm that keeps me from going back to Louisville then).

 

[LightBulbFun]

I was wondering if the Problem with the FireGL X3 is how you are taping the Pins as if it works with a G5 then It should work with a Quick Silver and a DA (its a well known flashed card) the thing is with taping the pins only Pin 3 is the one that grounds out the Macs PSU preventing it from booting the other one (pin 11) is the one that decides which AGP mode the card should be in so if You tape the wrong pin next to pin 11 the mac will still boot but nothing will show up in the AGP slot (Just like you guys have been seeing and like eyoungrens flashed 9800 which he mentioned in another thred) Just as if there is no card in the slot. I will attach a screen shot of where I found this out I also think you Should try Cleaning the AGP slot in ur mac and on the card Just to remove any chance of a Dirty contact being an issue.

 

[bunnspecial]

I've successfully taped a lot of cards, and in fact am using one in the the Quicksilver now(9600xt), so I doubt it's an issue for me. Even so, I'll double check and and count pins again to make sure it's correct. I'll also post a picture.

The FireGl has been uptaped and retaped 5 times through the course of my experimenting with it...as I said I've taped a lot of cards, and doubt I messed it up that many times. I'm far from perfect, however, so will check.