I've got a G4 Digital Audio and just bought a Radeon 9600 XT from a G5, and after taping pins 3 and 11 and installing the card, the computer will boot, but nothing shows up on the screen, and when I connect to it via VNC and look at system profiler, the graphics page is blank. Does anybody have any ideas?
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G4 DA not recognizing graphics card
- Thread starter rgwoehr
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I've found a handful of threads and comments where people had this trouble with a DA or a QS and were unable to get around it. It seems it's more common that it does work, but maybe I'm just one of the unlucky ones. Every other upgrade I've attempted to do to this machine has resulted it in it not booting properly, so at least it's consistent. My goal was to get a GPU that performed better, and also supported Core Image for Leopard, but the 9600 seemed to be the only reasonably priced option.
Anyway, I should have mentioned before that I forgot to unplug the computer when I installed it initially, and when I plugged the card into the logic board, the machine started before the card was fully seated, so I don't know if I could have fried the card. I know the logic board is fine, because the original card still works. I played around with it a bit more last night, thinking maybe the tape on the pins was getting dislodged, so I tried booting without pin 3 or pin 11 taped. Without pin 3 taped, it wouldn't do anything, as expected, and without pin 11 taped, it would chime but wouldn't go any further than that. No power to the peripherals when it won't fully boot (coincidentally the SiI3112 SATA card I just tried to put in this week behaved the same way, though I think I found the fix for that). With pin 11 taped, it boots most of the time, but sometimes it hangs after the chime and requires a reboot to boot OS X, so that leads me to believe that the logic board just doesn't like the 9600, or that the card is dead.
Anyway, I should have mentioned before that I forgot to unplug the computer when I installed it initially, and when I plugged the card into the logic board, the machine started before the card was fully seated, so I don't know if I could have fried the card. I know the logic board is fine, because the original card still works. I played around with it a bit more last night, thinking maybe the tape on the pins was getting dislodged, so I tried booting without pin 3 or pin 11 taped. Without pin 3 taped, it wouldn't do anything, as expected, and without pin 11 taped, it would chime but wouldn't go any further than that. No power to the peripherals when it won't fully boot (coincidentally the SiI3112 SATA card I just tried to put in this week behaved the same way, though I think I found the fix for that). With pin 11 taped, it boots most of the time, but sometimes it hangs after the chime and requires a reboot to boot OS X, so that leads me to believe that the logic board just doesn't like the 9600, or that the card is dead.
I have a 9650 (slightly slower than an 9600 XT but with dual-link DVI). Might even be taped already as it was used in a G4. If you’re in Europe, shipping won’t be outrageous.
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This card will not work in a G4, because the ADC power connector of the G5 is on an other location.
G5 GPUs without ADC like the 9600 XT dual DVI could work. No warrenty, i have never tested it.
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It’s my understanding that the ADC power tab only affects my ability to use an ADC display, based on this article http://www.pistolerapost2.com/viewing/96002g4.html
I managed to find a 9650 which is dual DVI so no ADC power tab on that regardless. I should have that by the end of the week. Hopefully that one will work. If not maybe I’ll look for a PC with an AGP slot and flash a 9550 or a 9700 since those supposedly don‘t have the same issues with the DA and QS models that the 9600 series has.
I managed to find a 9650 which is dual DVI so no ADC power tab on that regardless. I should have that by the end of the week. Hopefully that one will work. If not maybe I’ll look for a PC with an AGP slot and flash a 9550 or a 9700 since those supposedly don‘t have the same issues with the DA and QS models that the 9600 series has.
Normally you need the ADC Power connected, but perhaps your tapeing is not correct.
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