I ordered a 64mb pci Radeon 7000 to flash for my B&W G3. Unfortunately it doesn't work at all. I tested it in multiple PCs and never got any video and one PC wouldn't boot with it installed. While I was inspecting it to see if there was any visible damage I noticed the chipset is actually a mobility Radeon m6, the mobile version of the Radeon 7000. Assuming the seller sends me a replacement is it even possible to flash this with the Mac ROM or does the mobility Radeon require a different ROM.
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Weird Radeon 7000 with mobile chipset.
- Thread starter mustagcoupe
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Are there any model numbers on the card? Who made it? What outputs does it have?
Vampower made AGP and PCI cards using the Mobility Radeon (M6, VGA/DVI+LVDS) and Mobility Radeon 7500 (M7, DVI+LVDS). I actually have a 7500 version on the way. Vampower cards have a Molex power connector, presumably to power LCDs connected to the LVDS output.
As for the ROM, the Mobility may be clocked lower than the desktop variant (143 vs. 167 MHz) and/or have a different memory configuration (size, clock, type, bus width) as well as output layout. And it’s missing some features like T&L so I wouldn’t bet on a desktop ROM working “as-is.”
I suppose you’d have to put the card in a Windows system and query core and memory clocks, dump the BIOS etc., then see if you can find a ROM that matches or have a go at modifying an existing one to match.
Vampower made AGP and PCI cards using the Mobility Radeon (M6, VGA/DVI+LVDS) and Mobility Radeon 7500 (M7, DVI+LVDS). I actually have a 7500 version on the way. Vampower cards have a Molex power connector, presumably to power LCDs connected to the LVDS output.
As for the ROM, the Mobility may be clocked lower than the desktop variant (143 vs. 167 MHz) and/or have a different memory configuration (size, clock, type, bus width) as well as output layout. And it’s missing some features like T&L so I wouldn’t bet on a desktop ROM working “as-is.”
I suppose you’d have to put the card in a Windows system and query core and memory clocks, dump the BIOS etc., then see if you can find a ROM that matches or have a go at modifying an existing one to match.
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This is the card I got. I noticed visiontek called it a "rad7k", probably a really scammy way of indicating it's not actually a real Radeon 7000. I have not heard back from the seller yet. If they refund me and let me keep the card I might try replacing the 7 electrolytic capacitors. They're all capxon which I've heard are among the worst of the worst. if I can get it working it might be decent in a PC if it can't be flashed for Mac.
I ordered a different Radeon 7000 which is almost identical to the green pcb reference design with the flash chip isolated on its own area at the top of the board. The only difference is it has a composite out port in place of the normal s-video. I hope that one works with a standard ROM.
I ordered a different Radeon 7000 which is almost identical to the green pcb reference design with the flash chip isolated on its own area at the top of the board. The only difference is it has a composite out port in place of the normal s-video. I hope that one works with a standard ROM.
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There's always been a surprisingly scammy segment of the AIB market, it seems. EVGA lists my PCI e-GeForce FX 5200 as being DirectX 9.0 compatible when it's a rebranded GeForce MX 4000 (NV19PL, itself a GeForce2 MX derivative). I can't help but imagine getting this card in 2004 to replace a real NV34-based PCI 5200 or Radeon 9200 would suck big time, considering it, y'know, can't do DirectX 9 (not that NV3x could in the first place, but at least it tried). I'm not that mad now, I bought it as an MX 4000 to shove in a Pentium II 350 so I would have been happy getting a Riva TNT; MX4k is likely more than enough grunt to bottleneck the CPU, but it's still not cool in the context of the time that they did that.
ROMs are generally at least chipset-compatibility dependent from my limited experience of trying to flash an 8500 DV I have. I don't remember a normal 8500 ROM working on my DV, but then I wasn't doing it right anyway and I've heard of people putting Radeon ROMs on Fire GLs and GeForce ROMs on Quadros -- the difference being that they're both based on the same chip, I suppose. I'd guess that while the M6 is based on the 7000, there's probably some changes that make it not quite compatible?
The desktop 7000 is also missing T&L. Or is supposed to -- apparently it's possible ATi switched to using full fat R100s later on, and that's what was used in the Mac version of the 7000? TPU claims that Mac 7K only released in... 2004 (which, maybe for retail even if the R300 was already well out by then, but I was pretty sure it was an option for the Quicksilvers) but if so it could be the case that they did the run to use up extra R100s, who knows.
Side note I just thought of: ATi Technologies, Inc.: Array Technology, Inc. Technologies, Inc.
Side note I just thought of: ATi Technologies, Inc.: Array Technology, Inc. Technologies, Inc.
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The seller refunded me on the card with the Radeon m6. I poked around with a multimeter and found one of those capxon caps was acting odd. I replaced it and the card now works. It has a clock speed and memory clock speed of 163 I think. I will have to order good caps to replace the rest of them.
The other card I ordered came in. It's a diamond stealth s60 Radeon 7000. This one works and supposedly has a 150mhz CPU and memory clock speed but I can't get gpuz to read it properly. I tried to flash it with graphiccellerator on the G3 but that failed with a generic error. I put it back in the PC and ran a couple versions of atiflash. They report the ROM is locked.
The one with the Radeon m6 chip is faster in a quick benchmark I ran.
I'm kind of stuck here. I'd be willing to use either card but one card probably can't be used with the regular Mac Radeon 7000 firmware and the other has the ROM chip locked and both would probably need the clock speeds lowered from 183 to work. The flash chip on the locked diamond s60 is an atmel 25f512. I could probably order a larger flash chip and have digikey program it but I would still need to lower the clock speed on the ROM before I send the ROM in and I still have no idea how to do that or if the Mac firmware even works with this card.
The attached pictures are of the 2nd card, the diamond s60 with the locked ROM.
The other card I ordered came in. It's a diamond stealth s60 Radeon 7000. This one works and supposedly has a 150mhz CPU and memory clock speed but I can't get gpuz to read it properly. I tried to flash it with graphiccellerator on the G3 but that failed with a generic error. I put it back in the PC and ran a couple versions of atiflash. They report the ROM is locked.
The one with the Radeon m6 chip is faster in a quick benchmark I ran.
I'm kind of stuck here. I'd be willing to use either card but one card probably can't be used with the regular Mac Radeon 7000 firmware and the other has the ROM chip locked and both would probably need the clock speeds lowered from 183 to work. The flash chip on the locked diamond s60 is an atmel 25f512. I could probably order a larger flash chip and have digikey program it but I would still need to lower the clock speed on the ROM before I send the ROM in and I still have no idea how to do that or if the Mac firmware even works with this card.
The attached pictures are of the 2nd card, the diamond s60 with the locked ROM.
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Unfortunately I can't offer any advice on how to modify the cards for Mac compatibility but congratulations on the repair!
I can only suggest you wait for the venerable Sapphire Radeon 7000 to appear. That was to the go-to for flashing for Mac and they are hardly scarce. Most if, not all are 64MB cards. The other alternative is a Sun RV100. Those are actually the reference design for the Apple Radeon 7000 card flashed for Sun but most will probably have only 32MB of VRAM. The Sapphire will be cheaper to buy.
