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PowerMac G4 Fun! Part 2!
- Thread starter LightBulbFun
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If it doesn't work in Old World Macs, we can fix it! It's only got 256MB VRAM so that shouldn't be a problem. OF 1.0.5 needs the nvramrc setup by OS 9/OS X with their 256MB fix before the card will work though.
I'm still looking into a nvramrc fix for ≥ 512MB for OF 1.0.5 - OF 2.4.
alright preliminary quick testing! I did get the G3 Beige out, sadly no X1900
no matter what PCIe GPU I stick into the system it causes it to hang just as the onboard display int's
(as in the Monitor goes "Ooh I Have a signal" and then "Oh nope never mind"!)
this is with 512MB of RAM onboard an Xpostfacto 4's NVRAMRC patches applied
the interesting thing is the system hangs no matter which GPU I try, be it the X1900, the G5 Quad's GeForce 6600, or even the GT 120 from my Mac Pro LOL
all of them will halt the system (and plugging in directly to the X1900 produces no result at all, I did check incase it was trying to output via it!)
however the PCI to PCIe card is seen by OF and a small generic PC PCIe 1x 2 port SATA card is also seen pci 1095,3132, but not in Mac OS 9.2.2, and as above any GPU will cause it to fall over and die which is curious!
Blocking the onboard with pci-probe-list fffbffff does not help?
This entry in the device list, vendor and device-ID, is just what i got for the 6200 before anything worked. 😕
You're likely going to need to erase the EEPROM of the PCI-E card or flash a PC VBIOS to it, then load the FCODE ROM from disk as we did with the 6200 in the Beige.
Be prepared to setup the tty connection( Two Machine Mode ) to OF on the Beige, then I'm sure @joevt will have some insight into how to proceed.
I'd be interested to know if that works for @LightBulbFun on his Beige with OF 2.0f1, as it doesn't work on mine.
The pci-probe-list just ends up some bad value and seems to be completely ignored.
I missed this, that's not really a good sign.
I found with a PCI-E to PCI bridge on X86 host that some cards would not even allow the host to power on or post at all. Namely a PCI Radeon 9200 that was keyed PCI universal.
I suspect the card was not truly universal. As I recall the Beige G3 used either 5v or 3.3v PCI, but not both.
Tho if that were the issue here I don't think the system would power on at all, so there maybe some hope.
Interesting! For me - with OF 2.4 the onboard is completely - gone until i reset PRAM. And i now have inserted it to XPostFacto. So, whenever i use this, it is written to the NVRAMRC again.
I tried that a long time ago without any success, tis worth keeping in mind this is a Rev B G3 Beige Rage Pro onboard graphics, its not the same as your Rev C
but ill try it again soon just to be on the safe side!
indeed the Vendor and Device ID is what i expected with the SATA card its just a generic PC Card, I mentioned the numbers so people knew what to look for in my screen picture
sadly I dont think ill be able to do that at this point in time as I lack the required cables/adapters,
and also to a larger degree its very painful for me to cycle through computers as I have to drag them out of storage set them up and then put them away when the next machine needs testing
in my current setup I have only got space to have about 3 or 4 towers next to the test monitor, and even I have to shuffle them around the room depending on which im directly messing with
which again causes me a lot of pain due to my disabilities sadly
it really is very frustating PITA that I have to deal with sadly! and is why for example I was not able to contribute much with my G3 beige and 9600 during the 6200 saga as those where buried (under a 5500) and I need to shuffle a fair amount of machines to dig em out! all of which took me a good few weeks to do between moving a machine, recuperating and then moving the next one and so forth
and in general is why I am quite slow at doing things, I really have to pick and chose my battles/what to prioritise
so yeah I think someone else will have to pickup the torch on that front sadly
yeah I chucked the GT 120 (which I had to Hand from playing with my MacPro3,1) in there as sanity check, just to rule out any FCode shenanigans with the X1900 and 6600
I dont think its a voltage issue, the PCIe card is powered almost entire powered separately from what comes through the PCI slot, and the PCI to PCIe card does its own voltage/level shifting anyhow
but yeah as you say its quite strange and not good sign that even a completely non fCode GPU brings the system down, thats falling over right at the first hurdle there!
but at least we know the PCI to PCIe Bridge does work with at least 1 PCIe device, so hopefully the issues encountered are purely software/OF issues that can be overcome by the experts
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I present to thee the most graphically over powered PowerMac G3 blue and white ever LOL
View attachment 2083987
View attachment 2083988
the french X1900 GT was a dud, but I managed to win the above X1950 XT a couple days ago, and successfully flash it
It will be bottlenecked to buggery LOL, but this gives us 2 Dual Link DVI ports now
returning to PowerMac G4's with this, interestingly and sadly does not quite work in Leopard, with my PowerMac G4 MDD, I get an OF image just fine but the ATI drivers panic late in the boot stage, I have not tried this setup in any other macs so not sure yet if its a Leopard thing or an MDD thing!
it does however boot fine in safe mode!
alright so time to give this thread some love now I got the Sawtooth out to play and sadly the X1900 also kernel panics the same in Leopard like the MDD above
but rather excitingly my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro works with said Sawtooth in my newly acquired PCI to AGP adapter
so you know what this meant right? yeah I just had to give it a try in my G3 blue and white as one can see from the screenshot it appears to work perfectly! its so fun seeing "PCI" rather then AGP under a Radeon 9800 Pro and of course seeing it work in a G3 blue and white (this was something in itself I always wanted to try or see tried because I knew that in theory it just might work, AGP cards can run in PCI mode and all that, but the question of course is would it work in practice and would all the firmware/drivers/software play ball and it does!)
I actually did try this in my Power Macintosh 9600 first, but it did not want to play ball there so I moved to my Sawtooth as a sanity check since I pulled the 9800 Pro from there and knew it to be working, but obviously worth double checking, I will be revisiting the 9600 once I have had my fun with the G3 blue and white, I have got some plans for that in and of itself
(I never actually thought I would end up actually using the random OEM copy of NT4 I ended up with many years back but here we are LOL)
back on the Sawtooth front I am also pleased to report with with @joevt's 512MB BAR nvramrc patches the Quadro FX 4500 does work with the Sawtooth like It did in the G3 blue and white
one can see the Quadro FX 4500 G3 Blue and white here in this post https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...3.2303689/page-27?post=31653580#post-31653580
I got the Sawtooth out to play and sadly the X1900 also kernel panics the same in Leopard like the MDD abovebut rather excitingly my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro works with said Sawtooth in my newly acquired PCI to AGP adapter
so you know what this meant right?
yeah I just had to give it a try in my G3 blue and white as one can see from the screenshot it appears to work perfectly! its so fun seeing "PCI" rather then AGP under a Radeon 9800 Pro and of course seeing it work in a G3 blue and white (this was something in itself I always wanted to try or see tried because I knew that in theory it just might work, AGP cards can run in PCI mode and all that, but the question of course is would it work in practice and would all the firmware/drivers/software play ball and it does!)I actually did try this in my Power Macintosh 9600 first, but it did not want to play ball there so I moved to my Sawtooth as a sanity check since I pulled the 9800 Pro from there and knew it to be working, but obviously worth double checking, I will be revisiting the 9600 once I have had my fun with the G3 blue and white, I have got some plans for that in and of itself
(I never actually thought I would end up actually using the random OEM copy of NT4 I ended up with many years back but here we are LOL)
back on the Sawtooth front I am also pleased to report with with @joevt's 512MB BAR nvramrc patches the Quadro FX 4500 does work with the Sawtooth like It did in the G3 blue and white
one can see the Quadro FX 4500 G3 Blue and white here in this post
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...3.2303689/page-27?post=31653580#post-31653580
more PowerMac G3 fun this time! I got brave and finally decided to try the passive adapter I got with my Efika 5200 that @Amethyst1 very kindly sent me a few years ago! I admit this was one of the things I was most looking forward to getting with it, but also the most nervous about trying, I had already tried a PCI ATI Radeon 9200 in Efika PCI slot and that worked good, and I knew that PCI and AGP could both be 3.3V, but still I was worried about something blowing up, I also had to ensure that I got the adapter in the right way round, but yeah after the sucess of the active adapter, I thought I would try the passive adapter and what what do ya know it works Look No PCI bridge!
I am quite pleased about this because although in Mac terms this adapter is limited to the G3 Blue and white, Yikes! G4 and PCI slots of a G5, since this is a passive adapter so dont think it would work with 5V slots of most PowerMacs, I am still pleased it works because for the limited systems it does work, it does remove the overhead that PCI bridge would bring, and also it being a passive adapter, im sure it would be relatively easy for someone like @dosdude1 or such to reverse engineer and make anew (for those worrying, dont worry I did test with a less valulable card first tho of course I was still nervous for the PowerMac itself!)
Look No PCI bridge!I am quite pleased about this because although in Mac terms this adapter is limited to the G3 Blue and white, Yikes! G4 and PCI slots of a G5, since this is a passive adapter so dont think it would work with 5V slots of most PowerMacs, I am still pleased it works because for the limited systems it does work, it does remove the overhead that PCI bridge would bring, and also it being a passive adapter, im sure it would be relatively easy for someone like @dosdude1 or such to reverse engineer and make anew
(for those worrying, dont worry I did test with a less valulable card first tho of course I was still nervous for the PowerMac itself!)