Lucked into one of these beasts recently, completely stock, and I’d love to hook it up to a second monitor. While the stock gpu has vga+adc, we all know the story with the adc to dvi adapters, and I’m not in the market for an ADC monitor at the moment, so that port is functionally useless to me. Looking for recommendations on a PCI or AGP gpu that’s compatible with my quicksilver 2002 that can be readily found on eBay with 2 ports of some combo of vga and/or dvi. Doesn’t need to be powerful, just needs to drive a 1920x1080 screen for basic tasks. Hoping to keep it <$40 but realistically I have no idea if something like this even exists, and if it does, what it costs, so price is flexible. I’m a noob when it comes to old Macs so I feel like I’m missing something in my searches. I read a lot about flashing PC gpus… but I’m cautious due to the questionable compatibility of flashed cards, and also don’t have an AGP PC to flash them with. Any advice is appreciated, thanks guys.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
PowerMac G4 quicksilver 933mhz GPU upgrade
- Thread starter Superbosco
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Unfortunately, the only remotely cheap way to get a second/faster GPU in a Power Mac is to flash a regular PC card yourself, unless you can find another Power Mac locally that has a GPU with VGA and DVI on it.
"Mac Edition" cards are both hard to find and extremely expensive (due to scalpers, some cost hundreds or even thousands for boxed model).
"Mac Edition" cards are both hard to find and extremely expensive (due to scalpers, some cost hundreds or even thousands for boxed model).
Just looking to replace the one i have with something simple, doesn't even need to be faster, just with 2 regular display outputs.
Some more digging has brought me to this one, how do we feel about it?
ATI 109-63000-00 Rage 128 Pro 16MB AGP Video Card, P/N 1026301301 Apple OEM | eBay
Apple Part Number 661-2292. EEE Code GHQ, J0Q, J6K, and JGK. Pulled from Apple G4 Powermac Towers. We will include any significant defects or missing parts in the Condition Notes section. We understand that accidental orders happen.
www.ebay.com
That depends on whether you intend on running Leopard or not, as it requires some driver hacks to be able to work on Leopard. Even then, the experience will not be great.Just looking to replace the one i have with something simple, doesn't even need to be faster, just with 2 regular display outputs.
Some more digging has brought me to this one, how do we feel about it?
ATI 109-63000-00 Rage 128 Pro 16MB AGP Video Card, P/N 1026301301 Apple OEM | eBay
Apple Part Number 661-2292. EEE Code GHQ, J0Q, J6K, and JGK. Pulled from Apple G4 Powermac Towers. We will include any significant defects or missing parts in the Condition Notes section. We understand that accidental orders happen.www.ebay.com
The R128 Pro is a lot slower than the stock GPU that came with the 933MHz Quicksilver, the GeForce 4MX. I know you said that performance isn't too much of a concern, however the R128 Pro is 7x-8x slower (not 7-8%, but 700-800%) than the 4MX.
Leopard (and by a smaller extension OS X as a whole) is much more graphically demanding than Mac OS 9 was. You probably will feel the difference between them, even without doing anything graphically demanding.
Last edited:
The ADC port is not useless. You're looking for the A1006, which is the Apple ADC to DVI converter. It's powered. The cheapest one I just saw was around $30. At one point I had three connected to my Quicksilver (because three video cards with dual output). The converter will give you DVI. And if you need VGA, at that point you can just use a DVI to VGA adapter.
Apple A1006 for sale | eBay
Get the best deals for Apple A1006 at eBay.com. We have a great online selection at the lowest prices with Fast & Free shipping on many items!
www.ebay.com
Scroll down, it's not the first few in the list.
Also, there are Mac versions of the Radeon 9200, 9600 and 9800 Pro. The 9600 may need to have pins taped depending on which Mac model it was intended for and the 9800 Pro requires additional molex power.
An A1006 or two is very useful if you are getting into PowerPC Powermac G4 and 5 era macs that featured prominently, ADC connectivity. Another thought was that if you have any old PCI video cards around like a Radeon 7000 for example, you can use graphiccelerator and a mac reduced rom to flash it in OSX, no additional pc required. If you're interested, you can read up about it Here.
The A1006 is an elegant solution however and I agree with Erik and recommend that for DVI before flashing non-mac cards.
Good luck
The A1006 is an elegant solution however and I agree with Erik and recommend that for DVI before flashing non-mac cards.
Good luck
Last edited:
My impression is that the a1006 does the opposite of what I need. I need to convert the adc output on the Mac to a dvi port monitor. The a1006 takes a dvi signal and converts it for use on a ADC monitor. Unless I’ve missed something.The ADC port is not useless. You're looking for the A1006, which is the Apple ADC to DVI converter. It's powered. The cheapest one I just saw was around $30. At one point I had three connected to my Quicksilver (because three video cards with dual output). The converter will give you DVI. And if you need VGA, at that point you can just use a DVI to VGA adapter.
Apple A1006 for sale | eBay
Get the best deals for Apple A1006 at eBay.com. We have a great online selection at the lowest prices with Fast & Free shipping on many items!www.ebay.com
Scroll down, it's not the first few in the list.
Also, there are Mac versions of the Radeon 9200, 9600 and 9800 Pro. The 9600 may need to have pins taped depending on which Mac model it was intended for and the 9800 Pro requires additional molex power.
I’ll set up a saved search for a Mac 9200, no eBay results for a Mac specific one… meanwhile it seems that the 9800s can be found readily, if you’ve got enough pocket change saved up🤣
There are more reasonably priced used ones for $100-$200 of course. But that’s still way out of my price range.
Last edited:
My original searches on eBay had brought me to purchasing thisAn A1006 or two is very useful if you are getting into PowerPC Powermac G4 and 5 era macs that featured prominently, ADC connectivity. Another thought was that if you have any old PCI video cards around like a Radeon 7000 for example, you can use graphiccelerator and a mac reduced rom to flash it in OSX, no additional pc required. If you're interested, you can read up about it Here.
The A1006 is an elegant solution however and I agree with Erik and recommend that for DVI before flashing non-mac cards.
Good luck
nvidia graphics card Tv Out For Old Mac G4 | eBay
<p>Item was working pull from a Mac g4 computer. I’m selling this as is condition. </p><p>very good condition.</p>
www.ebay.com
Which I believe is a flashed agp card? Not entirely sure. But after install there was an incredible amount of artifacting and it even caused the Mac to crash at one point. I removed it and can only hope it didn’t cause any damage to the rest of computer. Which thankfully it doesn’t seem like it did.
Ideally I’d get a F2E9142 adapter and call it a day but unfortunately I don’t have $200 laying around for a passive dongle lol
I’ll give that pci card flashing a look into though, gotta rummage around in the ol pc parts bin to see what’s in stock
I own one of these as well; it's a big power brick that provides power to an ADC monitor. It comes with a DVI and USB cable attached, which plug into the back of the computer. So, it is exactly the opposite of what you would need.
If it can be used to connect a DVI display to an ADC port, I would also like to know how.
LOL Oops. You are exactly correct. My critical reading skills get an F.
They are dvi to adc only. I have a number of them in use with my own ppc setups and still managed to screw it up in my brains.
Last edited:
The connectors are similar. I wonder how hard it would be to remove the ADC connector on the video card and solder on a DVI. Maybe the pinout is close enough to make it easy. It would probably be good to disconnect the 28v pins.
I failed at that before you did…I win!LOL Oops. You are exactly correct. My critical reading skills get an F.
Part of the deal with ADC is that it also provides power to ADC monitors. So, not exactly sure how soldering on DVI would account for that or if it would even be a concern.
This should certainly be possible, as it uses a DVI signal, and the Belkin F2E9142 simply rewires some pins. It should be relatively easy to reverse engineer that adapter and create your own.