G4 Digital Audio Sonnet Upgrade

I didn't realise that OS9 would still run with a newer card. I guess the UI in OS9 doesn't use any GPU acceleration either. Tiger is pretty laggy with the rage 128 and I haven't even got anything installed. I think I'm gonna pick up a Radeon 9650 and see where I get, worst case scenario I can just sell it and get something else. I might consider buying a 4 mx too just because they are only £15.

I've got a new PRAM battery in the post too which should get rid of the annoying clock messages and hopefully make OS9 a bit more reliable at booting.

Thanks for all the help with this, I've got so many things I want to buy now! I want to try and fully spec the digital Audio, I'm on the lookout for a cheap zip drive too just because I may as well fill the slot in the case.

 

Yeah I hadn't through of checking that, I was a little worried about the current one leaking too as I guess it's the original.

 

So I got my Radeon 9650 today and I've taped pins 3 and 11 but I'm getting no video but it does chime. If I put the rage 128 back in, that works, the 9650 was sold as being a working card but I have nothing else to test it in. It is the oem card from a G5. I'm running 10.4.11. Any ideas? I'll get some pictures up tomorrow.

 

Well I tried again tonight but still no luck;

The two cards above each other;


Pins Taped off using scotch tape, only covering this side;


Booted up, no video, you can hear it booting in the background and if I press the keyboard I hear system sounds. If I put the Rage 128 back in it works fine. I've tried re-taping the pins but that hasn't helped. I tried without the tape (I was getting desperate) but that made the mac do a sad chime and then after that it wouldn't do anything if I pressed the power button. Putting the Rage 128 back in got it going again.

I have absolutely no way to test if its actually a working card, I'm kicking myself really as I've sold 3 G5s over the last 2 weeks, at least one of which would have been perfect for testing this card with. I'm not sure I'd want to return it to the seller either as I'd feel bad if I had damaged it.

Anyone got any ideas? I know the 9650 isn't a card that has really been documented as being used in a G4 so maybe it's just incompatible.

 

I think I may have figured it out, whilst browsing some random really old forum about using radeon 9600s in G4s I found a lot of people were having the same issue as me with 9600Pros with a later ROM revision on them, in their cases they were able to flash back to an earlier ROM and that got them working. I'm guessing the 9650 is a later card as it came out for use with the 30" Cinema Display. I'm doubtful I'll find an earlier ROM and a standard 9600 ROM would probably break the dual link DVI. I'm not giving up yet, I'll keep seeing what I can find.

On the subject of cooling the 9650 would have been ok, it seems to run really cool. I may look in to a different card though so will keep cooling in mind when looking.

 

Cheers I had been looking at getting a SATA card to flash as I have an SSD sat on my desk doing nothing. I need to sort a working video card first though. I'm not in any huge hurry, I'm not trying any other 9600s, a 9800 is tempting but would run hot with the sonnet CPU and they cost a bit more than I'd rather spend. I'll probably end up getting the Geforce 4MX that I'm watching on ebay, it should do the job, I'll need a monitor too but it has ADC so I can pick up a Studio Display if I find one cheaply.

 

I won a Formac Gallery 2010 on ebay for £5 on ebay yesterday. Its in silver so should look devent next to my Cinema Display. I'm picking it up on my way back from Scotland next week. I'll plug it in to my KVM so that it can be shared between my G4 and Mac Pro. In terms of GPUs I'm going to go for something that won't put out too much heat, the Radeon 9700 sounds good but they seem pretty rare. I'm also looking at the Geforce 6200, they're newer so should run cooler, there seem to be AGP4x compatible versions too. I'll have to flash it via VNC viewer.

I'm also going to swap out my exhaust fan, I have a Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1850rpm fan left over from my old PC, these are really quiet but have a really good static pressure, should be a nice improvement over the very loud stock fan that is in there (suspected bad bearings).

 

So it's about time I updated this thread.

I've been buying a lot of parts over the last few weeks all to allow me to flash a GPU to run in my G4, first of all was my GPU flashing rig, may I present the trusty Dell Dimension 4600 purchased for £7, I chose this as it had an AGP port as well as a floppy drive.

I later found the floppy drive was dead. I had no luck flashing from CD-ROM (NVFlash kept crashing) so I had a look online and found someone throwing out some old computer bits including a couple of towers with floppy drives. Went and picked them up (free), they had been sat under a lean to shelter by the side of a house and thus smelt a bit 'swampy'. I decided not to power them up but removed all the parts apart from the power supplies and took the cases to the dump. Got some other bits from them that will be going in the G4 but I'll talk about them another time. Anyway the floppy drives from these worked perfectly so I put one in the Dell Dimension and got going with the flashing.

Anyway I hadn't even mentioned what I was flashing, I got a PNY Geforce 6200 AGP 256mb off ebay for £5, I had somehow decided in my head it looks similar enough to the XFX one so I could clearly use the XFX Mac rom I downloaded. Picture below mid flashing, the Dell wasn't connected up to my network so I was using my Thinkpad to download everything.


Taped up pins 3&11 on the 6200 and put it in to my G4, moment of tru....uh oh.....that didnt go quite as planned, my PNY card clearly didnt like the XFX bios, I kept the original bios so I'll have to flash it back to stock at some point.


At this point I wasnt too sure what to do, my living room looked like a bomb full of early 2000s graphics cards had gone off, I had the cards below left over from the Dell and the other PCs I got:
Radeon 9250 256mb (couldnt find a mac bios)
Radeon 9650 (G5) (Dell wont display any video with it, probably as its a mac card)
Geforce 4 MX 420 (from the Dell)
Radeon 7000 PCI


I went with the Radeon 7000 as at this point I just wanted something that would output DVI to run my Formac 2010 (Rage 128s DVI doesnt work). Flashed the bios with atiflash, worked first time!!


So now was the moment of truth, does the DVI work?
YES!!!!!!!!!!!

Decided to upgrade the annoyingly loud stock fan with a Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP-15 I had lying around. Soldered on the original Mac connector.
I'll keep the stock fan for if I ever need to go back to it.

Celebratory run of GeekBench, not sure if this score is actually any good;

So thats where I'm up to for now, changing a graphics card has never been so stressful and I now have tons of excess hardware. The radeon 7000 isn't going to remain as the main GPU as it isn't much faster than the Rage 128 but it'll do for now and I'll probably leave it in as a secondary GPU. Not sure what to go with from here, I'd like something with a bit of power that is known to work in the digital audio.

 

9800s do look like a good cheap option although I am aware I would likely have heat issues in a digital audio, I do have a pci slot fan sat around somewhere. I guess I'd also be pushing the power supply a bit more although I think this mac has lived a fairly easy life so far it was really clean inside when I got it.

 

Yeah I've seen a couple of these come up, they do look decent.

 

Luckily I have the Radeon 7000 pci that I will be able to leave in for OS9 now

--- Post Merged, May 6, 2017 ---

The flashed FireGL/x800/x850 all look a little expensive anyway and would likely be overkill for anything I do. I may have a look at getting another 9600 as they are cheap and cheerful, no idea why my 9650 won't work in anything, I was tempted to try and flash it to the pc&mac edition bios but it would have to be a blind flash and I don't even know if my flashing pc will detect it

 

Ok will have a look for a 9600XT then. In other news I just bought a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 IDE PCI card off ebay, it was £16 which i thought was a decent price and it has come from a working environment so should be plug and play in my G4. The reason for buying this was I got a few IDE drives in the free computer parts I got the other week including a 250GB WD drive so this should let me use that. I may also set up my boot drive as raid WD800 80GB drives as I have two.