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FreeDOS boot cd Mac Pro 3,1

honeycombz

honeycombz

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 6, 2013
588
154
I want to create a FreeDOS boot cd I can use to flash GPUs. Could someone walk me through the steps of doing so? I am unclear which version to dowload, the appropriate way to burn it, and then once it boots there are 5 options, which option I want, and if I need to custom include cd drivers specific to my cd-rom drive?
 
My memory is hazy as it was a couple of years ago but I tried doing this & failed so eventually gave up messing around wasting my time & installed Windows 7 on a spare HDD. I am not sure that it's even possible as if it were I am sure that someone would have posted an ISO on this forum for other people to use.
 
Dosdude1 has an Youtube video about flashing HD5770 cards up. There he explains the process.
 
I remember trying to make a bootable FreeDOS CD years ago for the purpose of flashing an ATI card. I believe I was still on my MacPro3,1 at the time. It took me many, many, many tries before I managed to make a working CD. It was not straight forward at all. I tried doing one more time for a different purpose and was unable to get it done.
 
Never had an issue with this on my 3,1. Download the official image from freedos.org, burn with Disk Utility (if El Capitan's Disk Util is still able to do this :rolleyes:) and you should be good to go. Be sure to boot from a classic IDE CD drive, the SATA ones won't be able to boot any legacy OS.
 
Or just use any USB stick. You don't need much space and you can save the firmware image on it immediately.
 
The cMP can't boot a legacy OS from USB. Boot CD + FAT partition on an internal drive is the only way.
 
Ok, I got a Boot CD up and running but I would need the FAT partition to be able to move and copy files around? What would be a safe test command I could run to test that everything is working properly. I can type dir and see the CD contents, that's about it.
 
I'm not sure if there are linux versions of GPU flashing utilities but can’t you just use terminal in linux?
 
honeycombz said:
I'm not sure if there are linux versions of GPU flashing utilities but can’t you just use terminal in linux?
Click to expand...

The flashing utilities I've seen are DOS or Windows executables and they will not work in a VM.

I admit that I'm only a very light Linux user, so I don't understand what you could do with a Linux terminal to flash a graphics card.
 
Ok, well... let’s forget Linux and go back to my previous comment about what a safe test command would be to run to test that everything is working properly off the DOS boot cd. I can type dir and see the CD contents, that's about it.
 
I'd test to see if the flashing software can poll the existing ROM and save it to a file on the disk. Backing up the existing ROM is an important step anyway.

Assuming Nvidia:
nvflash -b Backup.rom​
 
Sorry, I don't know anything about flashing AMD. I imagine there is a similar utility though, and a similar command for saving the existing card's ROM to a file.
 
eh, I gave up with FreeDos. Just installed Win 7 via bootcamp like a normal person.
 
Now that I’m on Win 7 Bootcamp, can we briefly outline the procedure to flash the GTX 680?
 
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