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Upgrade G4 Cube

p4ush said:
Totally understand that. I was hoping the fact that the card I've got seems to visually match the one on the auction link from flyproductions would at least be a good starting point. I will try the ROM Maker too once I can grab a copy of the ROM from the card. Thanks.
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Mixing ROM's that are not identical can lead to the card not showing up at all after a flash in a PC or a Mac, and result in needing to lift the ground pin on the EEPROM and put it on a switch so you can ground it after POST and re-flash the card with a working image.

I don't think anyone can just look at two cards and tell if everything is exactly identical, just one resister move, and poof! a brick.

Even NVIDIA cards that share the same ROM, don't share the same NVDA,BMP.

Now if you compare part and revision numbers, that's a pretty sure way.
 
DearthnVader said:
Mixing ROM's that are not identical can lead to the card not showing up at all after a flash in a PC or a Mac, and result in needing to lift the ground pin on the EEPROM and put it on a switch so you can ground it after POST and re-flash the card with a working image.

I don't think anyone can just look at two cards and tell if everything is exactly identical, just one resister move, and poof! a brick.

Even NVIDIA cards that share the same ROM, don't share the same NVDA,BMP.

Now if you compare part and revision numbers, that's a pretty sure way.
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Gulp :oops:

Perhaps flyproductions could share their part/revision numbers when they reply, or if I’m lucky, even a copy of the original ROM which I can file compare with mine before flashing..

Thank you for this guidance, really appreciate it.
 
DearthnVader said:
Mixing ROM's that are not identical can lead to the card not showing up at all after a flash in a PC or a Mac, and result in needing to lift the ground pin on the EEPROM and put it on a switch so you can ground it after POST and re-flash the card with a working image.

I don't think anyone can just look at two cards and tell if everything is exactly identical, just one resister move, and poof! a brick.

Even NVIDIA cards that share the same ROM, don't share the same NVDA,BMP.

Now if you compare part and revision numbers, that's a pretty sure way.
Click to expand...

the amusing thing is I have a GeForce 6200, XFX WAMG card (note the WAMG rather then WANG, guess who did not notice this when he bought it LOL)

which ended up semi-bricked after I fed its ROM into the GeForce 6200 ROM marker and had it spit out a Mac ROM (its a DDR1 card rather then a DDR2 card so just produced garbage when flashed with the WANG ROM as the memory settings where wildly wrong, so I had to use the ROM maker rather then try and work with an existing ROM)

yet I was able to happily flash both PCI and AGP versions of PNY DDR2 GeForce 6200 with only minor editing of the WANG ROM, because they shared the same overall Port layout and Memory type and bus width (64Bit DDR2)

(one of which was Fixing the name its "Geforce 6200" in the WANG ROM, when it really should be "GeForce 6200", so I fixed it as it was bugging the crap out of me LOL)


I must play with the ROM maker again and see if I can get it to produce a working ROM for the WAMG card, or at least one of my PNY cards

(I know the GeForce4 Ti one works, as I was with someone as they made a ROM and flashed a GeForce4 Ti 4200 with it)

I also got a GeForce4 Ti 4400 myself recently so I look forward to playing with the GeForce4 Ti ROM creator more directly :)
 
DearthnVader said:
It's in the soft straps, 512MB works just fine, you just need to know how to properly edit the NVStrap.
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Yes, i tried this many times for a few cards including a Gainward GS 7800 as well as different breeds of the 6200...with absolutely no success! Do you have any confirmed card running 512 MB on the AGP with full driver support? I never heard of this to happen.
 
p4ush said:
That is very generous of you, thank you :)

Now let’s just hope I have bought the correct card.
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Not really sure about the Ram, but the PCB/Layout looks okay to me. I would suggest to just give it a try. Send you the Rom via PM.
 
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p4ush said:
Gulp :oops:

Perhaps flyproductions could share their part/revision numbers when they reply, or if I’m lucky, even a copy of the original ROM which I can file compare with mine before flashing..

Thank you for this guidance, really appreciate it.
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No need to worry! I can not positively confirm this. During experimenting with many NV AGP cards, including 5200, 5500, 6200, 6600, 6800 and 7800, and flashing litterally hundreds of Roms with lots of them not working properly or not at all, i not even once had to desolder anything! In no case nvFlash was not able to just rewrite the EEPROM with the next candidate or the card's own working PC-Rom. Just use 5.31, which for my experience, should be the safest, most compatible version.

For your card, i'm just 95% sure, it can run the Rom i made for the Club 3D, as it looks to me like the exact same thing only sold under a different brandname.
 
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flyproductions said:
No need to worry! I can not positively confirm this. During experimenting with many NV AGP cards, including 5200, 5500, 6200, 6600, 6800 and 7800, and flashing litterally hundreds of Roms with lots of them not working properly or not at all, i not even once had to desolder anything! In no case nvFlash was not able to just rewrite the EEPROM with the next candidate or the card's own working PC-Rom. Just use 5.31, which for my experience, should be the safest, most compatible version.

For your card, i'm just 95% sure, it can run the Rom i made for the Club 3D, as it looks to me like the exact same thing only sold under a different brandname.
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Thank you so much.

I am going to give it a try I think. Even if there was a remote chance of bricking, then it doesn’t matter because it’s not as if the card cost me lots of money.

I‘ve got lots of different versions sitting on my old DOS PC from my previous Nvidia card. I‘m sure I’ll have 5.31 there already.

I will report back with my progress :cool:
 
p4ush said:
Thank you so much.

I am going to give it a try I think. Even if there was a remote chance of bricking, then it doesn’t matter because it’s not as if the card cost me lots of money.

I‘ve got lots of different versions sitting on my old DOS PC from my previous Nvidia card. I‘m sure I’ll have 5.31 there already.

I will report back with my progress :cool:
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Well I took the gamble and so far it seems to have paid off.

For now I have only tested it in a DA G4 using VGA (didn’t have a DVI cable with me). I left it running the iTunes visualiser on max settings on full screen, for a good 12 hours. No problems so far :)

Thank you so much for the advice and especially to flyproductions for supplying the ROM.

I’ll post another update when it is finally fitted in my Cube.
 
p4ush said:
Well I took the gamble and so far it seems to have paid off.

For now I have only tested it in a DA G4 using VGA (didn’t have a DVI cable with me). I left it running the iTunes visualiser on max settings on full screen, for a good 12 hours. No problems so far :)

Thank you so much for the advice and especially to flyproductions for supplying the ROM.

I’ll post another update when it is finally fitted in my Cube.
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I spoke too soon :( Seems that DVI is not working.

I should of tested the DVI port before I flashed it. I will flash the original ROM back on it to test in a PC, but I would guess this is more because of an incompatibility in the Mac ROM I used.
 
p4ush said:
I spoke too soon :( Seems that DVI is not working.

I should of tested the DVI port before I flashed it. I will flash the original ROM back on it to test in a PC, but I would guess this is more because of an incompatibility in the Mac ROM I used.
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This can be fixed!

The card can only have two of the ports working together. I. e. VGA / DVI, VGA / TV-out or DVI / TV-out. So, if you tell which combination you'd prefer, i can send you a patched version.

By the way: Didn't you run into any heat-issues with the 12 hour (!) testing? :eek:

Edit: ...but DVI will only support up to full HD, 1.920 x 1.080. So no Dual-Link, 30" Cinema HD.
 
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flyproductions said:
This can be fixed!

The card can only have to of the ports working together. I. e. VGA / DVI, VGA / TV-out or DVI / TV-out. So, if you tell which combination you'd prefer, i can send you a patched version.

By the way: Didn't you run into any heat-issues with the 12 hour (!) testing? :eek:

Edit: ...but DVI will only support up to full HD, 1.920 x 1.080. So no Dual-Link, 30" Cinema HD.
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Wow, you really are the person with the solutions :cool:

Sounds great and would be appreciated.

I have no use for the TV out, so just VGA and DVI would be fine. I’ll be using the Apple 23” ADC monitor with the Apple DVI converter. No dual link etc.

I’ve had no heat issues so far, but bear in mind this was in a DA G4 - no Cube yet!
 
p4ush said:
I spoke too soon :( Seems that DVI is not working.
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Hmmm, so now i'm a bit confused!

Reactivated my Cube after a while, equipped with the Club3D 6200, flashed with the very rom i sent you...just to see, that it has flawlessly working DVI and even boots up fine with a dual display setup with VGA and DVI together.

Did you check the "usual suspects" i. e. pram-reset? What OS version are you running? And does the display/cabeling work ok with some other machine?

If yes to all, can you send me your card's PC-rom, so i can compare it to the one of the Club3D to check if (even that i don't expect so) there are any differences?

IMG_7924.JPG
 
flyproductions said:
Hmmm, so now i'm a bit confused!

Reactivated my Cube after a while, equipped with the Club3D 6200, flashed with the very rom i sent you...just to see, that it has flawlessly working DVI and even boots up fine with a dual display setup with VGA and DVI together.

Did you check the "usual suspects" i. e. pram-reset? What OS version are you running? And does the display/cabeling work ok with some other machine?

If yes to all, can you send me your card's PC-rom, so i can compare it to the one of the Club3D to check if (even that i don't expect so) there are any differences?

View attachment 1745238
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Sorry for the delay, I was waiting to get back on my PC to help eliminate issues.

Thanks for trying your set up for me. I had already tried the usual suspects, PRAM reset, PMU reset.. no luck.

I reinstalled my previous WANG XFX 6200 to check the displays, cables etc are all working fine. I also managed to get a dual display working, so no problems there.

Lastly, I restored the original firmware and tried it in a PC. There I found the fault - it seems that the DVI port is faulty :(

I will try to source another card and keep you posted.

Thanks again for your efforts so far.
 
p4ush said:
Thanks for trying your set up for me.
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You are welcome!

At this point i wanted to know myself as i had a look into the file and couldn't figure out why DVI should not work. But i did not know for sure as the last time i used the Cube i had it running the TV via VGA to HDMI adapter and hadn't tried the DVI for a long time.

But now i remember the things about the connector setup with the nv ppc roms: VGA and DVI are working together all the way. The only decision having to be made is, if the TV-out should work together with the DVI or VGA, if needed. It can only be setted up to work with one of them.

It's been a while since i last worked with this stuff, so some things wanished a bit... ;)
 
The rom you have should have s-video out working together with VGA. But you have to hit "detect displays" in the displays control panel, if something is connected to the TV-out. I never got this to work from bootup.
 
flyproductions said:
The rom you have should have s-video out working together with VGA. But you have to hit "detect displays" in the displays control panel, if something is connected to the TV-out. I never got this to work from bootup.
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Aha I understand. However I haven’t seen, let alone owned, an S-video cable in this decade 😂
 
I managed to locate another actively cooled Inno 3D card.

Took a gamble because again the VRAM chip markings didn’t tell me a lot.

I flashed it with the custom ROM from flyproductions. Seems to have paid off so far :) And I’ve got a working DVI-D port this time!

Just wanted to thank flyproductions again for his help with this 👍
 
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flyproductions said:
Thanks for reporting back! :)

Did you do some extended 3D-testing to see, if it is stable with the clockrates?
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Apologies for disappearing! I haven’t had any time to spend on the Cube since March.

I’ve got myself a VRM upgrade and a dual 1.8GHz 7447a.

Can’t wait to get all of it together once I get the time.

I will report back :)
 
p4ush said:
I’ve got myself a VRM upgrade and a dual 1.8GHz 7447a.
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Sure, this is dual 1.8 7447a? My thinking was the 7447a just runs up to 1.7 and the dual is 1.5 while the 1.8 is 7448.

I have one of these dual 1.5 running nicely with a narrow oc at 1.6. But vrm-bypass is needed. It didn’t even boot without.
 
The powerlogix/newer technology CPUs are the only ones that had VRM bypass, that I know of. So if the CPU was set up for external power (i.e. VRM bypass), and external power was not connected, then it makes sense that it wouldn't boot.

Trying to run a dual aftermarket CPU on the stock VRM is a risky proposition. The powerlogix/newer technology CPUs usually have switches to adjust the speed and voltage. This is nice for overclocking, and/or reducing power/heat for using tower CPUs in Cubes. I think you could run one of these duals on the stock VRM with reduced speed/voltage. The sonnet CPUs require a soldering iron to make adjustments, so any dual sonnet in a Cube should have an upgraded VRM in my opinion.

All of the aftermarket CPUs I've seen with 7447 and 7448 chips were overclocked. The later ones (either '48 or '47) would typically do 1.8GHz without problems, and sometimes 2.
 
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