I would like to flash a Radeon 7000 for my Blue and White G3. I have a visiontek rad7k which is actually using the mobility Radeon m6 chipset and a diamond stealth s60 Radeon 7000. I'm guessing the visiontek rad7k can't use the standard Mac firmware being a mobile chipset. The diamond stealth s60 has the flash chip locked and can't be unlocked from dos atiflash. And the memory and GPU speeds are both set to 153 vs the 183 in the standard Mac firmware so the speeds would have to be lowered as well. Can anyone help me flash either one of these cards to work in my B&W. I have attached pictures of both cards.
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Radeon 7000 flashing help
- Thread starter mustagcoupe
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You are correct. It is my understanding that the mobility chipset will not flash properly with the 7000 roms. You can flash in OSX directly using graphiccelerator. Macelite has a couple 7000 roms, graphiccelerator dl and is a good resource.
themacelite.wikidot.com
Wikidownloads2 - The Mac Elite
The diamond card with the real Radeon 7000 chipset has the flash chip locked in a way that can't be unlocked from dos atiflash, graphiccellerator just complains it can't flash it. The chip is an atmel 25f512 which has a write protect leg, I assume I have to lift the leg or something or just replace the chip entirely. Ive never worked with flash chips before and I'm not that familiar with how they work.
Is it possible to write or edit a ROM for the m6 chipset. These visiontek cards are much cheaper than a real Radeon 7000 and perform very well. The visiontek card with the m6 chip actually outperforms the diamond card with a true Radeon 7000, probably because of the slightly higher clock and memory speeds. They also appear to be well built apart from the 7 capxon electrolytic capacitors.
I lifted the write protect pin on the locked flash chip on the diamond card and was able to program it to the Mac firmware using DOS atiflash. I found a reduced firmware that already had the GPU and memory clocks set to 150mhz so I used that one. So far it seems to be working but I can't run the benchmarks yet. My NAS apparently got corrupted by the power outage the other day. Attempting to unzip the benchmarks I had stored on the NAS hard crashes my G3 so now I have to fix the corrupted disk in the NAS.
Which pin did you lift? Have a pic? You seem comfy with component repair - are you considering upgrading the card to 128k?
The flash chip is circled in yellow in the picture below, the picture was taken before I disconnected the leg. The write protect leg is the 3rd one to the right of the dot on the corner of the chip, pin #3. It appears to be a standard pin out for these chips but not all cards have pin #3 connecting to anything. If it's left floating the chip is not hardware locked, on this card it was connected to a bunch of other pads, probably ground. To disable the hardware write protect you just disconnect that leg from the board. You could cut it but I desoldered it and lifted it off the board.
I probably won't replace the flash chip with a 128k one. It looks like the reduced ROM doesn't really have any negative effects on new world mac's if the card is passively cooled. On an old world Mac it looks like you loose video in open firmware and the boot screen but I am using it in a blue and white G3. I think most reduced firmwares delete the fan control so on a card with a fan the fan always runs at 100% which is annoying. I had that problem with a flashed x1900 in a g5 and had to add an external fan controller. Luckily the Radeon 7000 is passively cooled.
I am definitely comfortable with component repair. I semi regularly do surface mount stuff and this was far from the hardest thing ive ever done. The hardest thing I've ever done was fabricating and soldering a new leg onto a memory chip on a Radeon 9000 from an MDD. I dropped the card and broke a leg off flush with the package on a memory chip. I was able to file back the epoxy on the top of the chip and solder a new leg onto the lead frame of the chip. I attached a few pictures of that to if you're interested. Theres a missing leg next to the one I replaced its N/C on that particular chip so I didn't bother to replace that one to.
Attachments
On a side note, the thermal goop they used to adhere the heatsink onto the chip is very hard to get off. Typical astringents like IPA or nail polish remover did nothing to get it off and to just get it apart it took a minute or so of a hairdryer on hot/high to get it to release. Ultimately I used a straight razor to get the old goop off.
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The mobile variant also appears to be missing the 2 black chips on the back side above the PCI connector that yours has. Those might be a strong signifier that it's a real Radeon 7000 chip, my diamond card and the sapphire card that everyone recommends for flashing have similar black chips right above the PCI connector on the back side.
My visiontek card had some kind of silicone based white goop on the heatsink and chip. It was still very soft so I was able to just push it off with a razorblade. Then I used alcohol to remove the film it left behind.
My visiontek card had some kind of silicone based white goop on the heatsink and chip. It was still very soft so I was able to just push it off with a razorblade. Then I used alcohol to remove the film it left behind.
The Visiontek 7000s seem to stay cheap on ebay for some reason. Ive noticed there are a few YT vid/shorts talking about how the VTs are mobilitys and unflashable which could be scaring PowerPC retro folks away so if the differences noted above are good indicators of the non-mobility VT-RAD7Ks, well right on then, cheap VTs 
For example, here is an $18 shipped auction (so probably $20 USD after tax) for what looks identical to mine in pad type and R530, R531 & R529 positioning which leads me to think it is an actual 215R6LAEA12 variant and not a mobility. Heck I would pick this up if I hadn't sold my other B&W.
For example, here is an $18 shipped auction (so probably $20 USD after tax) for what looks identical to mine in pad type and R530, R531 & R529 positioning which leads me to think it is an actual 215R6LAEA12 variant and not a mobility. Heck I would pick this up if I hadn't sold my other B&W.
when i flashed my ati 7000 64 mb card, i needed to get a new rom chip and solder it to my board. then i could do the flash and it worked afterwards
*edit*
this page may be of some useful reading
ATI Radeon 7000 Mac ROM Flashing
*edit*
this page may be of some useful reading
ATI Radeon 7000 Mac ROM Flashing
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