Help with flashing Radeon 7000 PCI for Power Mac

[RealKGB]

I'm trying to flash a Radeon 7000 PCI with an OF-compatible VBIOS. It is a 64K ROM card so I'm using a trimmed version, but that's not the problem sadly.
The problem is that I can't get the card to a point where it is flashable.
Attempts:
- Booted Windows 2000 in Katmai P3 build. atiflash crashes with a General Protection Error.
- I attempt to boot a 98 SE startup disk. It fails to boot, whether with 2x1GB SDRAM or 32MB SDRAM.
- I attempt to boot a 98 SE CD. It also fails because the BIOS doesn't see my optical drive, while Win2K does.
- I grab a Northwood P4 system and attempt my 98 SE startup disk. It boots, but doesn't see my card.
- I go back to my Katmai system and attempt to write the 98 SE startup disk data to a spare hard drive. "Disk I/O error".
- I give up on trying to figure this out myself.
The only other system I have that has PCI slots is my Power Mac G4 Yikes!, which works fully with its stock Rage 128 Pro(?).
Is there any way at all for me to flash this VBIOS with my Power Mac? I'm at my wits' end here.
Any more details I can provide.

 

[weckart]

Try a real DOS or FreeDOS boot CD. Plenty of guides online how to do that or with download links. Never had a problem flashing my cards on generic PCs but I tend to use floppy disks to boot and load the flash software. It avoids the hassle of supporting USB or optical drives. Make sure your 7000 is not the default graphics card per the BIOS settings and, preferably, make sure your default graphics card is not ATI either, so you don't flash the wrong one.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I would flash the card in your G4 Yikes! with Graphiccelerator and ATI Multi flasher

use Multi dumper to dump your PC ROM, then use Graphiccelerator to install the Mac ROM into Multi-flasher, run the run me first, then run the ATI Multi flasher, and make sure you DONT flash your ATI Rage 128, (it will prompt you if you do or dont want to flash at each ATI card you have)

(if your extra worried you can pull the ATI Rage 128 and setup a VNC server to remote into the Yikes or something such with just the Radeon 7000 installed)

I have found it works much better then trying to flash ATI cards in a PC

 

[RealKGB]

I would flash the card in your G4 Yikes! with Graphiccelerator and ATI Multi flasher

use Multi dumper to dump your PC ROM, then use Graphiccelerator to install the Mac ROM into Multi-flasher, run the run me first, then run the ATI Multi flasher, and make sure you DONT flash your ATI Rage 128, (it will prompt you if you do or dont want to flash at each ATI card you have)

(if your extra worried you can pull the ATI Rage 128 and setup a VNC server to remote into the Yikes or something such with just the Radeon 7000 installed)

I have found it works much better then trying to flash ATI cards in a PC

Thank you SO MUCH, it worked!

And now I can run 1080p60 on a Power Mac G4 from 1999.

EDIT:
The card works in OpenFirmware too. Wasn't expecting that.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Thank you SO MUCH, it worked!

And now I can run 1080p60 on a Power Mac G4 from 1999.

EDIT:
The card works in OpenFirmware too. Wasn't expecting that.

No problem! happy to have been able to hepl and glad to hear it worked well for you

indeed Reduced ROM cards will still work just fine in OF in a New world ROM mac, the part thats removed from the ROM in reduced ROM cards is the NDRV, which is "only" a MacOS specific thing, rather then an OpenFirmware thing

if your running 10.2.8 through to 10.5.8 Id recommend installing the ATI 4.5.7 update

 

[RealKGB]

indeed Reduced ROM cards will still work just fine in OF in a New world ROM mac, the part thats removed from the ROM in reduced ROM cards is the NDRV, which is "only" a MacOS specific thing, rather then an OpenFirmware thing

What exactly is NDRV? I looked it up but couldn't figure it out.

if your running 10.2.8 through to 10.5.8 Id recommend installing the ATI 4.5.7 update

Will do, thanks!

 

[CR00K3D]

I would flash the card in your G4 Yikes! with Graphiccelerator and ATI Multi flasher

use Multi dumper to dump your PC ROM, then use Graphiccelerator to install the Mac ROM into Multi-flasher, run the run me first, then run the ATI Multi flasher, and make sure you DONT flash your ATI Rage 128, (it will prompt you if you do or dont want to flash at each ATI card you have)

(if your extra worried you can pull the ATI Rage 128 and setup a VNC server to remote into the Yikes or something such with just the Radeon 7000 installed)

I have found it works much better then trying to flash ATI cards in a PC

Hi there,

I have this Radeon 9000 128 MB AGP card lying around at home and I wanted to flash it for a long time now.
Unfortunately I don't have a Windows PC with AGP slot, so I'm stuck flashing it on my G4 Sawtooth, which is currently running OSX 10.2.8 with java 1.4.1 (because the twin turbo II is my only Mac OS X compatible PCI card and I can't get it to work on tiger because I can't seem to find anything on forcing Mac OS X to use older NDRVs).

Now with that being said I tried ATI Multi flasher on Mac OS 9 but it won't open, and even if it did I would have no clue how to install the rom into ATI Flasher without Graphiccelerator. On 10.2.8 Graphiccelerator crashes as soon as I try to install the rom (or open ATI Flasher / Dumper).
Just for fun I even tried it on a different system(a G4 Mystic) that is running tiger with a rage 128 AGP installed. It too crashed in very much the same way(I did boot it into Safemode just as the instructions said) but this time I got an error message saying "carbon error -61" and so far I haven't found anything relating to that issue. I read the instructions that came with Graphiccelerator and I ran the "open me first.app" every time I tried to flash my card, but the app only bounces around the Dock and disappears again (ATI Flasher and dumper act the same way).

Should I try the vnc server? I don't really think it makes any difference, since my issue seems to be related to Grapiccelerator or even classic seeing that carbon is part of classic Mac OS if I'm not mistaken, rather than to hardware, but at least I cloud use Tiger then.

Could the issue be related to my rom? It could very well be faulty and I don't have a check sum to compare against. But if it was my rom, than I would be left to wonder why Graphiccelerator crashes as soon as I try to open ATI Dumper. By the way, I already downloaded Graphiccelerator from a different source, but it is the same version(1.3.4).
So maybe 1.3.4 is incomparable? Maybe someone could hook me up with a different version.

Well, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing wrong or what's causing this issue or even how to fix it and I would be very glad if someone could help me out.

 

[LightBulbFun]

does the ATI Multidumper produce any ROM files? (it will dump all ATI video cards in a system, be it PC or Mac ones or even built in video cards)

the "run me first" app is just a small app load a kext contained within that allows the Multi dumper and multi flasher to work

if neither are working, then I would say something is preventing the kext from loading

make sure your using an admin account in Mac OS X etc


BTW to force Mac OS Tiger (and maybe Leopard) to use the old NDRV based in the video card's ROM you need romndrv=1 in your boot-arguments, but this is not relevant to flashing

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/powersurging-to-mac-os-x-10-5-8-power-macintosh-9600-fun.2144305/page-3?post=26659084#post-26659084

 

[CR00K3D]

does the ATI Multidumper produce any ROM files? (it will dump all ATI video cards in a system, be it PC or Mac ones or even built in video cards)

the "run me first" app is just a small app load a kext contained within that allows the Multi dumper and multi flasher to work

if neither are working, then I would say something is preventing the kext from loading

make sure your using an admin account in Mac OS X etc


BTW to force Mac OS Tiger (and maybe Leopard) to use the old NDRV based in the video card's ROM you need romndrv=1 in your boot-arguments, but this is not relevant to flashing

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/powersurging-to-mac-os-x-10-5-8-power-macintosh-9600-fun.2144305/page-3?post=26659084#post-26659084

Thank you for your quick reply,

I looked in all usual places: the active directory, the root directory, the user directory, but I can't find any other rom files except the one I downloaded for my radeon 9000.

After I unplugged the Twin turbo, plugged the radeon 9000 into my G4 Mystic and connected via screen share, I was at least able to install the rom into ATI Flasher, but when I click on open ATI Flasher in Graphiccelerator and select the app it's not doing anything now, not even crash(which might be progress!?).

But yes neither one is working and if I try to open either of them they now only bounce inside my Dock for maybe a second, which on my mystic usually means that that app crashed.

Do you have any suggestion on who I could get the kext to load?

The Account that I used is my admin account. Should I try my root account instead?

Concerning the whole twin turbo thing, what does your twin turbo do when you're booting into tiger without romndrv=1? If I plug mine into a system running tiger, the card won't output any video, but who do I change my boot arguments when I can't make out if my computer reached single user mode, let alone typing it in and rebooting.

 

[LightBulbFun]

to confirm this is using a fully updated and clean (or relatively such) 10.4.11 install yes?

the ATI Rom dumper will spit out a ROM file and a txt file in the same directory that its placed in



the Twin Turbo is only meant for Old world ROM macs, so its not surprising that it produces no output in a New world ROM machine

(if I boot my 9600 with it without romndrv=1, then the GUI never loads)


try in terminal running the actual run me first app execatuable in terminal and see if it spits out any errors there IE right click the app show package contents and go to and double click on, or drag to terminal and hit enter on

Run Me First.app/Contents/MacOS/Run Me First

 

[CR00K3D]

Well it is fully updated but not really clean. I'll try it with a fresh install today because there must be something weird going on, I tried to launch activity monitor yesterday and it just kept crashing.

Ok, so at least know that GPU and my Logicboard should be alright. If I was to set that boot-argument on my Mac before putting the card in, then put the card in and boot it up again, would that work?(What I mean is, does it safe the boot-args to the nvram) Or do I have to enter the boot-argument overtime before booting into tiger?

I'll reinstall tiger and then I'll run the run me first via terminal.

 

[CR00K3D]

to confirm this is using a fully updated and clean (or relatively such) 10.4.11 install yes?

the ATI Rom dumper will spit out a ROM file and a txt file in the same directory that its placed in



the Twin Turbo is only meant for Old world ROM macs, so its not surprising that it produces no output in a New world ROM machine

(if I boot my 9600 with it without romndrv=1, then the GUI never loads)


try in terminal running the actual run me first app execatuable in terminal and see if it spits out any errors there IE right click the app show package contents and go to and double click on, or drag to terminal and hit enter on

Run Me First.app/Contents/MacOS/Run Me First

I now ran Run me first in terminal on a fresh installation of tiger(fully updated).
All it said was "logout [Process finished]" so I guess that worked(I attached a screenshot below).

After I installed my rage 128 and ran the dumper it actually dump the rom.
But the flasher still doesn't do anything, even though I installed the rom from my rage that I dumped to it.
And I still can't get it to dump the rom of my Radeon 9000 which leads me to wonder, if that has anything to do with this Mac lockout switch I read about(small resistor on the board, not unlike the once that determine the G4s clock speed) or if my card has actually died.

If it would proof to be that ominous lockout switch, how do I determine which resistor I need to relocate? There are around 26 of these 0 ohm resistors on the board(some of them below the heatsink) and I really don't wanna go threw each and everyone of them and resolder them just to possible find out that my card might just be dead. And the to pictures online that showed this resistor showed other pcbs than mine(there is a guide about that on Mac elite and a forum post on OS9lives although I think that one was about the 9200).

 

[LightBulbFun]

does the Radeon 9000 actually show up in the System either in Graphics and displays or PCI Devices?

even un-flashed it should show up in one of those

and have you tested said card in a PC to make sure it does work?

 

[CR00K3D]

I already check yesterday but unfortunately it doesn't show up.
I did work when my friend gave it to me a while back, but that was a couple years ago. So I guess it is dead then, kinda a shame actually.
Do you think baking it might revive the card? I've read that some people had success baking there iMac GPUs and seeing that non of the Capacitors is bulged or leaking and everything else seems fine as well, I only can suspect the die to be the culprit.

 

[LightBulbFun]

if it wont show up at all then its likely beyond baking or such

BTW did you tape pins 3 & 11? if you have not even tho it is an AGP 4x max card id still try just incase

 

[CR00K3D]

No I didn't, I didn't even know that I had to I just expected that I wouldn't need to on a 4x card. I'll certainly try that tomorrow. Just to make sure, I start counting from the display connector side, not the back?

LightBulbFun thank you so much, seriously you've been of great help to me.
Let's just hope it works after taping.

 

[LightBulbFun]

No I didn't, I didn't even know that I had to I just expected that I wouldn't need to on a 4x card. I'll certainly try that tomorrow. Just to make sure, I start counting from the display connector side, not the back?

LightBulbFun thank you so much, seriously you've been of great help to me.
Let's just hope it works after taping.

yeah flip the card over so your looking at the backside and start counting from the right (IO bracket) side

theres some good pictures here showing which pins are 3 and 11 exactly http://themacelite.wikidot.com/pins-3-and-11